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August 31, 2003

As if Baghdad did not have enough troubles
: Now it has to contend with Lycraed bikers.

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Salam Pax, bound
: Tom Coates got hold of an advance copy of Salam Pax' book, set to be released in the U.S. in October, says Amazon (but on Sept. 5 in Britain, says Amazon there).
Coates says that in present tense, he found Salam's weblog "essentially unreadable," but he decrees that in hindsight, it is "an abiding - albeit small - artefact of life on the ground during the second war in Iraq."
He also says -- and I agree with this -- that because Salam was a witness from there, not here, he helped us listen to new perspectives. The same can be said of Iranian weblogs, I'd say.

: I wonder whether Salam's 15 minutes are long since over. I wonder whether his book will sell now, so many months after the war. The reason I wonder is that the buzz about him has subsided greatly recently, partly because he has had less to say online, partly because he is no longer the only witness there.

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May caption contests abound
: Bush drops his dog.

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Winning the peace
: Gene at Harry's place (darn, that's confusing) points us to John McCain's Washington Post op-ed today criticizing our postwar progress in Iraq:

A recent visit to Iraq convinced me of several things. We were right to go to war to liberate Iraq. The Iraqi people welcome their liberation from tyranny. A free Iraq could transform the Middle East. And failure to make the necessary political and financial commitment to build the new Iraq could endanger American leadership in the world, empower our enemies and condemn Iraqis to renewed tyranny.
If we are to avoid a debate over who "lost" Iraq, we must act urgently to transform our military success into political victory....
We do not have time to spare. If we do not meaningfully improve services and security in Iraq over the next few months, it may be too late. We will risk an irreversible loss of Iraqi confidence and reinforce the efforts of extremists who seek our defeat and threaten Iraq's democratic future....
Iraq must be important to us because it is so important to our enemies. That's why they are opposing us so fiercely, and why we must win.

He is all the more correct, of course, after the terrorist bombings in Iraq, which I'll bet come from al-Queda et al. As Tom Friedman said today:

o one can say with any certainty who was behind the bombings at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and the Shiite holy place in Najaf, but here is what you can say about them: They are incredibly sick and incredibly smart.
With one bomb at the U.N. office, they sent a warning to every country that is considering joining the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq: Even the U.N. is not safe here, so your troops surely won't be. They also stoked some vicious finger-pointing within the Western alliance. And with the bomb Friday in Najaf, they may have threatened the most pleasant surprise about post-Saddam Hussein Iraq: the absence of bloodletting between the three main ethnic groups — Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. After the Najaf bombing, Shiites started blaming Sunnis, and Shiites started blaming each other.

Gene also says that pro-war bloggers have been notably silent on the problems in postwar Iraq. He's right. We have to show support not only for the war but also for investing the resources necessary to build the peace.

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Whodathunkit?
: Perry de Havilland escapes to Bratislava and reports:

I had always thought that Amsterdam and Zagreb were locked in mortal combat to see which had the most beautiful women per square kilometer but now I realize that those two august cities were just battling it out for second place. I do not think I have ever seen as many extraordinarily attractive young ladies in my life. Bratislava is, to use the technical term, seething with babes.

: A further report here.

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The soundtrack of our lives
: Adam Curry is pushing for an audio RSS.

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August 30, 2003

The memorial
: The NY Times has a substantial -- but ultimately unsatisfying -- package on the 9.11 memorial in Sunday's Arts & Leisure section.
In the lead essay, Michael Kimmelman contemplates -- without finding conclusion -- the use of names in memorials.

The competition guidelines for the memorial at ground zero require that the design "recognize each individual who was a victim" on Sept. 11, 2001, and on Feb. 26, 1993, when the World Trade Center was first attacked. It's a safe bet that many of the 5,200 submissions interpret that as some kind of list of names. By aesthetic and social consensus, names are today a kind of reflexive memorial impulse, lists of names having come almost automatically to connote "memorial," just as minimalism has come to be the presumptive sculptural style for memorial design, the monumental blank slate onto which the names can be inscribed.

I can't say anything about my own proposed memorial, for we're forbidden by the rules of the anonymous competition from revealing our plans to the media, but I did address the issue of names because it's clear to me that the names are not enough. Just listing the names marks only the deaths of victims, not their lives. The memorial must to do more. I have my humble suggestion. There are other, better solutions, I am sure.

: More in the package:
: Herbert Muschamp writes a story that is at first antiseptic, then twee, then borderline offensive as he describes the current design in distant, aesthetic terms and then criticizes a pamphlet calling for a Museum of Freedom at the site:

Throughout the ground zero design process, many New Yorkers have felt "powerful and powerless at the same time." They have spoken, but with little conviction that they are being heard. Should I have a turn at such a mouthpiece, this is what I would say:
Not everyone saw the twin towers as symbols of freedom. For some, they represented the Kafkaesque mental enslavement of government bureaucracy and dull office routine. For others, they stood for Rockefeller power: for oil, that is to say, and the bizarre things we do to satisfy our need for it.
NOT everyone thinks that the United States is ideally poised at this moment to point fingers at "places that lack basic human freedoms." ...
Ideally, I would like to voice such opinions without being branded a traitor, a pro-terrorist, or a person opposed to freedom.

That all-caps "NOT" is a typographical accident online -- that's where a drop cap appears in print -- but it is like a political Freudian slip, revealing Muschamp's real point and the point I found offensive.
: A story on the "culture derby" erupting downtown.
: James Sanders says New York has an aversion to memorials and he explains why.
: A story on those who would rebuild the Twin Towers.
: A profile of David Childs, who's designing the Freedom Tower.
: And a story that reports little but speculates much on the process of selecting the memorial.

: It's an impressive, ambitious lot of stories. But ultimately, it's soulless, bloodless, like a parody of Arts & Leisure stories where art imitates art and never life.
The package treats New York as an unfinished sculpture in a dehumidified, silent, white museum, not a place where people live, a place that now must remember both its horror and its heroes. That's what this memorial is about, not aesthetics or politics or culture or architecture. It is about life and death.

: After reading the Times, go read Michele and see how a person with a beating heart is affected by the place, without a memorial.

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It's not a campaign, it's a spa
: Arianna Huffington presents her handy seven rules of campaigning:

1. Absolutely no alcohol. Not even a sip of wine from somebody else's glass.
   
2. No carbs. Although I must admit I broke down on the airplane and had a bag of pretzels. But it was a really tiny bag.
   
3. Absolutely no high heels.
   
4. Drink lots and lots and lots of water. And when you think you've drunk enough, drink another bottle
   4a. Make sure you have a well-trained advance person who always knows where the closest bathroom is.
   
5. Keep plenty of blotting tissue handy for dealing with shiny patches in-between interviews. Especially if, like me, you have Greek olive oily skin - it's great for wrinkles, but bad for TV.
   
6. An ample supply of café lattes.
7. And, most importantly, it helps to no end to have a set of ideas you passionately believe in - and that you don't mind saying again and again and again and again and again and again..

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Sexist twaddle
: As a man, I'm offended by this bigoted foolishness from a New School twit writing for Pacific News Service:

President Bush may not face much opposition in Congress to his plan for perpetual preemptive war, but he better watch out for the women.
Angry over the swagger of violence coming out of the White House, disgusted by the bring-them-on itch for a fight as the solution to political problems, women around the globe are organizing in new ways.
These gender activists are on the Internet, in the streets, packed into rooms forming more groups and pushing resolutions through the United Nations.

What's most offensive is that they lump together bin Laden and Bush and act as if the problem is testosterone, not terrorism.

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Kelly's case for war
: The Guardian finds a piece written by Dr. Kelly supporting regime change and war:

A remarkable article by Dr David Kelly, published for the first time today, reveals the government scientist's true views ahead of the war on Iraq and his expert assessment of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
In a development which could have a major influence on the Hutton inquiry, Kelly said that, although the threat was 'modest', he believed military action was the only way to 'conclusively disarm' the country.
He also argued that there was evidence Saddam still had chemical and biological weapons and regime change, the policy of the United States, was the only way to stop the Iraqi dictator....
Kelly's article reveals a hawkish stance on Iraq which will come as some comfort to Number 10. 'Iraq has spent the past 30 years building up an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction [WMD],' he wrote. 'Although the current threat presented by Iraq militarily is modest, both in terms of conventional and unconventional weapons, it has never given up its intent to develop and stockpile such weapons for both military and terrorist use.'
Kelly argues that any co-operation with UN weapons inspectors was superficial and that rockets specifically for chemical and biological use had been found.

Take that, Blair bashers.

: Dr. Kelly's own conclusion:

Perhaps the real threat from Iraq today comes from covert use of such weapons against troops or by terrorists against civilian targets worldwide. The link with al-Qaeda is disputed, but is, in any case, not the principal terrorist link of concern. Iraq has long trained and supported terrorist activities and is quite capable of initiating such activity using its security services.
The long-term threat, however, remains Iraq's development to military maturity of weapons of mass destruction - something that only regime change will avert.

: It's time to give the Guardian credit: They have covered the Hutton inquiry well and fairly even as it tightens the noose around Andrew Gilligan and the BBC.
Meanwhile, do you think Gilligan has started looking for a new job?

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The Party's party
: The Daily Kos takes a page from Howard Dean's playbook and says Meetups have worked so well for him that plain ol' Democrats should meetup, too:

The progressive grassroots can start wielding the influence it deserves on the Democratic Party by self-organizing as well. And I'm not just talking about the DNC, but also state and local parties.
We can do a lot of good by banding together and working to help elect Democrats at all levels of government. MeetUp can provide the vehicle for that self-organizing -- especially in places were the local Democratic Parties are moribund, ineffective, or non-existant.

I'm thinking of setting up a meeting for real liberals (read with a German accent, as in real politik) but I'm afraid only Roger L. Simon and Michael J. Totten would show up.

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RSS and sliced bread
: Lots of people are jumping on the mail-is-dead-long-live-RSS bandwagon. See Chris Pirillo and Steve Outing. In theory, I agree: RSS is a good delivery mechanism for newsletters (but clearly not personal email) because there can be no spam; you get only the feeds you ask for.
But, as I've said before, there's a problem: RSS readers are not ready for prime time. They're getting better. After Newzcrawler ate all my feed info and hard work, I started using Bloglines, web-based reader, and, by Outing's recommendation, Feed Demon, a downloaded client and they're both good. (Yeah, I know, you Macites have great readers but you are, sadly, a minority smaller than one-legged, left-handed, stuttering, albino Navajos.)
Here's the problem: The audience using RSS readers is tiny. That isn't going to stop me from publishing lots of RSS in my business -- headlines and, yes, newsletters. It's a good thing and a coming trend.
But the truth remains: If you're an email newsletter publisher and you have to convince your customers to have to download and set up a new program, you're sunk.
The only way RSS is going to work for business is if it is integrated into Internet Explorer.
So, at last, here's my point for all the RSS evangelists out there: You should be making a pilgrimage to Redmond to sell Microsoft on the need to integrate RSS into IE (as well as Outlook). Pirillo, Winer, et al: Hop that next jet west. And there are lots of RSS-informed Microsoft bloggers; enlist them in the cause; get them to start selling RSS inside the fortress.
That is the one sure thing that will make RSS take off. Without that, sad but true, RSS will remain just a neat geek thing.

: A commenter reminds me of a point I forgot to make: Of course, the Mozilla folks and other open-sourcers should be integrating RSS into their work to put additional pressure on Redmond. But, of course, IE is the homerun for it is the ubiquitous client.
Oh, and putting pressure on AOL would be good, too. AOL is providing RSS feeds of its new blogs (pat them on the back) but not providing its huge audience with a way to utilize them (hello, left hand, I'd like you to meet the right hand).

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August 29, 2003

'I'm here to move love to the top of your to-do list'
: It's a mistake to judge a series by its preseason promos but if we were to do that, Alicia Silverstone's Miss Match would be sure be be a bomb, based on lines like that.

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Send the man some Prozac spam
: Matt Welch points to evidence that Bill O'Reilly is starting to crack under the strain.

: More evidence here.

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A simple request
: A simple request to the wonderful group blogs I read (you know who you are, Corante and Hit & Run and Command Post and Harry): Put the name of the post's author at the top of the post so I can hear the right voice as I start to read. Also, put your authors' names in the RSS feed. Thank you.

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The bloggers on the bus
: Dave Winer tells candidates how to blog and echoes my call to let bloggers on the campaign bus.
Bloggers should also be credentialed to cover the conventions (see wi-fi and conventions, below). I plan to do just that myself.

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Told ya
: I told you it would happen: Somebody would dig up fresh dirt on Arnold's past lifestyle -- and it wouldn't make a difference in the campaign, freeing up future politicians to become human again and not priests supposed saints.
LA Observed has the backstory on the digging up of Arnold's Oui interview by Mickey Kaus and its subsequent publication at The Smoking Gun.

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The left shall rise again
: John Podhoretz in the NY Post does the left the favor of listening to them, recognizing their growing movement, and advising them how to succeed:

THE rise of an ardent, passionate, angry and engaged left is the most important political story of 2003.
The hottest book of the new publishing season is Al Franken's "Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)." Joe Conason of the New York Observer has a fast-selling tome called "Big Lies." At the end of September comes "The Lies of George Bush" by David Corn of the Nation magazine, which will likely hit the bestseller list as well.
The triumphant success of Howard Dean's once-quixotic presidential campaign in marshaling genuine grass-roots support and money over the Internet demonstrates that there is a large and hungry audience in the land for a leftist political-cultural message.

Yow. It sounds as if he's ready to convert. Not. He still sees the devil in the left:

The Dean campaign is a more mainstream outgrowth of the popular demonstrations against the Iraq war organized last winter by the Stalinist anti-Semites of International ANSWER.

Yow, again. But then he hits his stride making two important points about the political reaction to FoxNews and about the left's agenda. First, Fox:

Part of what fuels this alliance is a feeling of powerlessness — of not being heard, of not being paid attention to. Note the rise of what I like to call "Foxanoia," the lunatic theory popular these days in leftist circles that the Fox News Channel has become the dominant voice in all of America and is controlling every piece of information that gets out to the American people.

I'll second that motion and amend it: The anti-Fox craze also reveals (pardon my standard screed here) an essential snobbiness to the left these days. The left used to be the people's cause, the Democratic party the people's party. But with the age of disapproving, PC snips, the left became a culture of snobs. Labor ties aside, they look down upon the mall masses. And that's why they don't understand the popularity of Fox and its balls-out opinions. That's why theirs has become a smaller movement.
Podhoretz is right, though, to sense a spark of growth in energy if not numbers in the left thanks to George Bush:

These folks believe a grotesque, nearly cosmic unfairness is going on — a wrong that must be righted. Everything — everything — has gone wrong since 2001. "The Bush administration has done virtually nothing good for the country," says Michael Tomasky, who as editor-elect of the American Prospect magazine will be making the more cerebral versions of the arguments offered in Franken's unabashed screed.
That is a powerful glue, the perfect opinion for the rise of a mass movement.
The problem for the Foxanoia axis is this: What, aside from hating Bush and the Fox News Channel, do they believe in?

Right again, I'm sorry to say. The left has become the negative side. That used to be the right's job: to resist change, to complain. (Now don't give me hell in my comments and email, you conservative gabsters out there. I know I'm oversimplifying. Let me make my point. And note that I'm agreeing with a conservative columnist here, ferchrissake. Step away from that keyboard!). Now the left is complaining about everything that's wrong and about its enemies, Fox and Bush. That won't get them very far, in elections or in governance.
So Podhoretz suggests that they need to come up with a more positive agenda and he's right; it's the best advice the left can get from a sworn enemy.

Yes, the left is rising. But for the left to truly challenge the right for dominance of the intellectual debate, its leaders and thinkers will need to be able to offer a picture of a better, safe and wealthier United States.

Listen to the guy.

: More on the left and its causes: Matthew Yglesias says reforming Alabama's taxes is a more important issue than stopping the crackpot "judge" from etching granite. Gene at Harry's blog agrees and points to David Bromwich's piece that says: "It is sometimes said that the left won the culture war of the late 1960s and the right won the political war."

: Ted Barlow asks a good question in the comments:

Left-wingers criticize Fox for being biased, unfair and deceptive. At the same time, right wingers have been criticizing the New York Times and the BBC for being biased, unfair and deceptive.
We could talk forever about the validity of these sets of claims, but they're beside the point. Jeff, you say that the left-wing anti-FOX craze reveals an essential snobbery. Hmm. What does the right-wing anti-NY Times and anti-BBC craze reveal?

Yes, I think that the right's paranoia about the NY Times is quite revealing -- of its paranoia, mainly.
But I'll counter that that's besides the point here. The point is not who's biased and who's not or who's right and who's not but instead what the left is missing in not having its own FoxNews, its own balls-out opinions, its own sense of populism.
Politics is marketing and the right and FoxNews know that better than the left.

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Too many last words
: Yesterday, I heard a shrink on TV say that people would react differently to the release of the Port Authority 9/11 transcripts that filled the papers today: Some people need to know more; some would stay away. I wasn't sure which I would be.
Well, I read them all. It was painful, again, bringing memories back to the surface, reopening wounds. But I read them.
There are tragic mistakes: telling people to stay put. Who could have known?
There are stories of heroism, pieced together now. Jim Dwyer in the Times tells how two PA employees saved at least 50 people trapped on the 88th and 89th floors of the north tower. I look at the picture of one of them, Frank De Martini, with his beautiful children and I start counting the broken hearts again.
There are stories of helplessness; all the papers quote the assistant manager of Windows on the World dutifully calling, asking when help will arrive, telling the police that air is running out fast, even asking permission to break a window.
There are stories of wisdom, such as PATH dispatchers getting all their passengers and employees safely out of harm's way. I was one of them.
Yes, I had to read it all. I'm not sure why. I think it is a matter of keeping witness, of making sure we remember the horror and the heroism of the day.
As the second anniversary fast approaches, I had feared that we were trying to forget too quickly; TV is paying scant attention to the day and that is wrong, for we must remember.

: See the stories and transcripts here. Star-Ledger: 1, 2, 3. New York Times: 1, 2. Newsday: 1, 2, 3.

: The Port Authority, which was sued to release the transcripts, said:

Because of the sheer volume of these materials, it is impossible to summarize their details. In general, they show people performing their duties very heroically and very professionally on a day of unimaginable horror.
Representatives of media organizations have assured us that they are interested in this material solely to evaluate emergency response on September 11, and to recount heroism. We take them at their word, and fully expect them to refrain from publishing gruesome, gratuitous or personal details that do nothing to further this discussion. We also hope and expect that the media will show appropriate respect for the families of the heroes of September 11, particularly as the second anniversary of that painful day approaches.

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Our man in Kabul
: Ben Hammersley goes shopping:

One store we visited tried to sell me a bullwhip. Ah, cool, I thought. Indiana Jones. No, says the shopkeeper, from the Taliban time. For women, he says, and looks away.

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August 28, 2003

Wi-Fi and the political conventions
: Will the Democratic and Republican conventions be wi-fi'ed?
They should be.
The press should demand it: instant communication.
The delegates should demand it: instant politicking.
We should demand it: Instant blogging, a new perspective on what has become a dull, predictable, stage-managed, unimportant event.

: Update: In the comments comes this fascinating insight into technology and TV news from someone at ABC News:

Greetings:

I read your post about Wi-Fi at the political conventions with great interest. I am a project manager for the operations division of ABC News and we are actively working with both parties to encourage them to make Wi-Fi available not only at the conventions but also during the primaries.
We are planning to use Wi-Fi for our own production oriented activites including email and, to a lesser degree, for sending video files to our news room. ABC News has trained a number of its correspondents to shoot video in the field and transmit it using a laptop and DV camera.

: When I complained about having problems with my high-speed access at Doubletree (did I remember to tell you: Doubletree sucks?), a quick-thinking of marketing at Wayport popped right in to offer his help.
Let's see who's quickest on this: Who will volunteer to wi-fi the conventions and primaries for media, participants -- and bloggers, getting great publicity and goodwill in the process: Wayport, T-Mobile, Boingo....

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Geek love
: Cory Bergman finds a frightening bit of sociology in his TiVo newsletter:

Talk about a geek loser. A Brooklyn man says he used TiVo's digital photo feature to propose to his girlfriend. Ted Linhart streamed a picture of himself holding a sign that read "Will You Marry Me?" to his living room DVR so that his gal Rachel would see the on-screen proposal as she walked through the door. Unbelievably, she said yes.

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Belch
: I was dying to go to In 'n' Out Burger... until I saw this. Layne, Welch, what do you have to say to this?

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Voices of September 11th
: Michele was aghast that media plan to pay little attention to the second anniversary of September 11, so she started Voices, a project to gather memories and reflections on the day.

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Come on down!
: FoxNews has been playing and replaying a clip of Sean Hannity's show in which he quizzes Arnold Schwarzenegger on issues, one after another.
If the California campaign is a game show, this is the lightning round.

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A better man than I, Gunga Din
: John McCarthy, the British journalist who was held hostage by Islamic Jihad for more than five years, is returning to Beirut and also going to Iraq and Iran to do a TV documentary. I'd bring along some Marines, a few Mossad veterans, and P Diddy's posse, if I were him.

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Howard Dean has nothing on me
: My embryonic experiment in hyperlocal blogging has attracted the attention of a local politician running for county office. The guy's a Democrat in the land of suburban Republicans. I've told him he should blog.

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Our guys in Afghanistan
: Ben Hammersley finds another Afghanistan blogger, an aid worker:

We just had one of our expats resign today after only two weeks.
She's never travelled outside of Europe before and I think Kandahar is freaking her out. I guess it's not for everybody this bouncing around war zones swatting flies and trying to come to terms with 45 C daily temperatures. Sometimes I wake up feeling like Martin Sheen in the opening ten minutes of Apocalypse Now and go to bed feeling like Brando in the last ten minutes. Mr. Kurtz could live here in splendid madness as easily as Vietnam or the Congo. Armed thugs ripping around the IDP camp last night set the tone for the whole bloody day. One shitty thing after another.

: And Ben files another report from a Kabul Internet cafe (I think we're leaving the stone age):

Yesterday I moved from my hotel into the spare room of the house of the correspondent here for Radio France. Sebastian is trying to start a little side business by renting out rooms, drivers and LandCruiser he is about to buy, to visiting journos and documentary crews. His driver, Babrack, although probably not spelt that way, is an ex-Mujahadeen who credits Stallone’s performance in Rambo 3 for teaching him the correct technique for firing a rocket launcher and looking good at the same time.

: Update: Thanks to a commenter, I now see that the Afghanistan blog appears to have been taken down. I smell a bureaucrat.

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August 27, 2003

The private Private Lynch
: Private Lynch has an honorable discharge, so she's now free to tell/sell her story.

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We've only just begun...
: I got to see Ev Williams today, for the first time in way too long. (See his moblog photo here. Scroll up and you'll see an odd picture of a mean injury on Ev's photogenic face. Judging by the way I look in my picture, as if I'm about to lunge across the table at him in some heated moment of RSS argument, it may appear as if this is an action sequence. But he arrived with the scar. I didn't do it. Sporting injury, just for the record.)
We had fun (or at least I did) talking about so much that is left to be done with weblogs, tons of new functionality, lots of important uses, many new dimensions of data.
So add this thought to my post below in which I tweak my friend Jimmy Gutterman for tweaking bloggers: We are still at the dawn of this weblog thing. There is much more to be done before weblogging in its many forms -- community, content, advertising, organizing -- can begin to reach its potential.

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Out
: I know that the Barney's Warehouse Sale has been out (as opposed to in) for years now. But I still go. That's where I get my suits (protective coloration at Conde Nast, as a colleague says). I'll confess that but for the grace of a half-hour, I would have been stuck there when the lights went out a week ago (boy, would that have been embarrassing).
Anyway, as the sale sputters to its close this weekend, I must sadly report that it ain't what it used to be.
They closed off whole hunks of the floor at the 17th Street warehouse; they are simply selling less.
The suits included hardly any designer labels; it's just Barney's private-label stuff (which is nice, but it's no Boss and certainly no Aramani).
The crowd was clearly thin; today they shut down the downstairs checkouts.
What am I going to do? Pay retail?

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Cold crime
: Who'd have thought that there was crime in Antarctica?
A boat was nabbed for poaching endangered Chilean Seabass -- which is the ingredient for Nobu's signature dish.
What will New Yorkers do?

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Poor us
: Joi Ito says it appears that America's infrastructure is falling apart. Can we argue?

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Hyperlocal
: My experiment with hyperlocal blogging continues, in fits and starts. I attended -- no, covered -- my town meeting last night.

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Remake
: Howard Dean is trying to deftly remold his war posture and it's getting noticed. Glenn Reynolds quotes Dean: "We have no choice. It's a matter of national security. If we leave and we don't get a democracy in Iraq, the result is very significant danger to the United States. . . . bringing democracy to Iraq is not a two-year proposition." And then he says:

Howard Dean is right. And he's the leading Democratic candidate at the moment. And that's bad news for the terrorists, whose only hope is that we'll fool ourselves into thinking otherwise, and give up before the job is done.

And Michael J Totten points to this Washington Post story on the topic.

The challenge for Dean now is to transition from champion of the antiwar, anti-Bush left to electable Democrat without losing his steam and solid liberal base, according to Democratic strategists.

That will be a challenge, since he's already alienated me and a whole lot of other Democrats. And making the right noises isn't enough. He needs to be genuine. I'll see right through him if he is not.

This transition is no easy task for the most outspoken critic of the Iraqi war...

No kidding.

I think what you're seeing, from Totten at least, is simply the disaffection that comes from looking at the present Democratic field. Realistic Democrats, like us, are starting to ask ourselves whether we could go for Dean... and there's no good answer, yet.

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Dander up
: Jimmy Gutterman is trying to steal a trick from Andrew Orlowski -- that is, baiting bloggers as a pathetic ploy for attention -- with a piece at Business 2.0 that poo-poos blogs.

Several years into the phenomenon, even with solid tools like Blogger available, the blogging community is still, for the most part, self-absorbed and elitist. There's only minimal evidence that anyone is using the blog format as a business tool.

Come on, Jimmy. It's just a publishing tool. It's just content. And, yes, I can name others making money -- and other big companies using weblogs (start here). Maybe you're just reading the wrong weblogs; you're concentrating in your piece just on the founding bloggers when the field has exploded in every direction. Or you can't get the hang of writing one. But you sound just like an old radio guy who thought this television thang would never pay off. [via I Want Media]

: Jimmy says weblogs have been around for six years, and so he judges their popularity on that time scale. Well, Filo T. Pharnsworth came up with TV a long time before it became popular. I'm not ready to start the clock on weblogs yet. September 11 brought on more writers. The war brought on more readers. AOL et al will bring in the masses. It's still just the beginning.

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Just what we've been waiting for
: Glenn Reynolds, law professor, on the 10 Commandments.

As George Washington noted, "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
I'm willing to ignore, as de minimis, things like "In God We Trust." But there's nothing de minimis about what Roy Moore was attempting. He wanted to make a statement, to the effect that George Washington was wrong, and that the United States is a Christian nation. He wanted, in other words, to establish Christianity as the officially sanctioned religion. And that's not, er, kosher. It's quite obvious that Moore has more in mind than merely making a cultural/historical statement about the role of the Judeo-Christian tradition in law. And to suggest otherwise is either to be completely clueless or to, er, bear false witness.

LINK | Comments (21)

August 26, 2003

Get me to the minibar!
: Oh, I would not do well at Burning Man, not well at all. These descriptions make me want to call in the deprogrammers:

Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind.

And:

Burning Man is an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance.

And radical self-absorption.

: Jim Treacher points us to the comments on Boing etc., where the audience is giving Burning Person Xeni heck.

LINK | Comments (15)

Is half a BBC better than none?
: David Brake cautions that we all may have gotten a bit too excited about the BBC's announcement that it would put its programming on the Internet:

In fact, while BBC News' summary suggests Dyke said the Creative Archive would contain "all the corporation's programme archives", the speech actually promised to allow "parts of our programmes, where we own the rights, to be available to anyone in the UK to download" (emphasis mine). Nothing there about all of the BBC's archives. And the example he uses - kids downloading, "real moving pictures which would turn their project into an exciting multi-media presentation" make it sound like a collection of digital clip-art.

LINK | Comments (1)

Sight
: Ain't science grand?
Here's a man who received a stem-cell implant into his eyes and for the first time since he was 3, he can see:

I found it very distracting to look at people's faces when I was having a conversation. I can see their lips moving, eyelashes flickering, head nodding and hands gesturing. At first, I tried looking down, but if it was a woman in a low-cut top that would be even more distracting. It was easier to close my eyes or tune out the visual input. This was often necessary in order to concentrate on what they were saying. I am sure there will come a time when all this visual communication will mean more to me, but for now it is just distracting....
The kids played soccer and asked me to play with them. I am more tentative with sight than I was without. My perception of space is still confusing enough and I don't want to run over one of these little guys. Still, I can see the ball flying through the air, which gives me a thrill.

And bloggers' favorite Halley has a cataract operation and reports the results:

I open my new improved eye.
Okay, I am freaking out. The bird is so resplendent in color and gold leaf. The colors are so vibrant. The edges are so clear and ... I hardly know the word ... try CRUNCHY ... that I can barely believe it. The delicate detail of the bamboo leaves on the painting are exquisite. I am gasping.

LINK | Comments (1)

Project Trainwreck
: The numbers are in: The Battle of Shaker Heights, the product of this season's Project Greenlight on HBO, brought in $47,693 in five theaters last weekend. So that's less than $10,000 per screen. Miramax execs had said on the Greenlight season finale that if they were going to consider wide distribution of the film, they'd want to see $20,000 per screen (to which one scarred exec replied: the only way this is going to make $20k is if everybody seeing the movie leaves a $100 bill on the seat when they leave). So by that measure, it's a bomb.
But that doesn't matter. It's better, in fact.
This is what reality TV is all about: humiliation. And who better to humiliate than Hollywood executives? It's such great entertainment.
I can't wait for next season.

LINK | Comments (5)

No-speed chase
: I'm watching a no-speed chase in L.A. on FoxNews right now: The perp isn't moving and when she is, she merely creeps or goes around in crazy circles.
Could this be the result of skyrocketing gas prices: Cops and robbers can't afford bad fuel economy?
Turns out, the lady just got out of a mental institution (a bit too soon, I'd say).
As I'm watching, a few colleagues come into the office to catch the, uh, action with me.
One turns to the other and says: "David, here in New York, those people aren't in cars. They're in subways."

: Now she's proving to be a Pied Piper; there's a parade of pedestrians (yes, they exist there) following her. I half expect to seem them waving to the choppers above.

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Two years
: Anniversary stories are among the least informative nonstories media cover; they're dutiful and predictable and so I'm no big fan of them.
But I do think that September 11th is different. Network news will be all but ignoring the date -- here's the Post's roundup -- and that will probably indicate how other media will handle the date. Perhaps they're reflecting a national mood to get past, to get over, to get on with life. But I wonder. There are plenty of good stories two years on: How safe are we? How are the families coping? How much have our lives changed? What has been the cost of terrorism to business and government? What has the health impact been on New Yorkers (I'll tell you mine)? What has the psychological impact been on our children? What about the explosion of this new medium, weblogs, after 9/11? How about following the memorial jury for a day to see how the outpouring of tribute is affecting them? There are a million stories...

: For what it matters, I will again take the day away from work to spend at the World Trade Center and I will blog about it.

LINK | Comments (10)

Attention must be paid
: Inspired by David Weinberger's blogging from the Dean bus, I suggested yesterday that a wise campaign would invite some bloggers to get press credentials and get on the buss to cover the election. Why not invite Ken Layne, Matt Welch, Michael J Totten, Roger L Simon, Matthew Yglesias, make your own list. You'd get a fresh perspective of real people, real voters; it would shake up the status quo, and it'd be easy to get lots of digital link. Just look at how impressed Dave Winer was to get a press advisory from Dean:

I got a press advisory this morning, via email, from the Dean campaign. That's very cool. Someone decided that even though I write for a weblog, I count as a press person.

That's what it's all about: Letting people know that they count.

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August 25, 2003

Share and share alike
: I haven't done a video weblog (aka vlog) in too long because (a) I'm lazy and (b) I'm cheap -- that is, I don't want to find myself with a big bandwidth bill.
The solution to that problem is bubbling up: weblog P2P. It was a topic raised at the Boston weblog conference and now John Robb is raising it again, starting to define how it would work.
Unlike nefarious Napster, weblog P2P would work, Robb says, only via links, not hard-drive searches. Thus the files would be legit. And they'd be served from many webloggers all sharing the bandwidth bill. Content communism.

LINK | Comments (2)

Not funny
: Maher tries to find humor in a dead child. He fails.

LINK | Comments (7)

Flashmopes
: Says Jenny the Librarian:

You know flash mobs are "over" when they land on "Jim Mullen's Hot Sheet" in Entertainment Weekly (August 22/29, 2003, p. 12)"

"Flash mob: hundreds of people are alerted by text messaging to show up at a certain time, and they do! The only hard part is getting Mom to drive you there."

LINK | Comments (1)

Subscribe to The Week
: There's a good cause behind these ads for The Week: If you subscribe, you prove that blogs can be good for business. So subscribe already. (More on this here)
: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the plug.
: Bloggers: If you'd like to sell The Week as well, leave your name in the comments. If this test is successful, I'll pass on your name...

LINK | Comments (5)

The PC editor
: Watch the Orlando Sentinal's "public editor," Manning Pynn, twist his knickers in knots trying to justify not calling Hamas a "terrorist" organization.

In April, the committee adopted this standard: "Use caution when using these terms [militants, terrorists], which can show bias toward one side in a conflict. Generally, 'bombers,"attackers' or 'suicide bombers' are preferred terms."
The term "terrorist" certainly expresses judgment: It imputes to the person or organization being described the motive of trying to instill fear. "Militant" seems to me much more neutral. And that may be why the Sentinel, despite its style committee's decision, continues to use that term to describe Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Most of the news organizations I surveyed do the same.
I'm afraid that the horse is out of the barn on the labeling of al-Qaeda. Although journalists strive to avoid expressing bias in reporting the news, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, so shocked Americans -- including the news media -- that they almost universally applied the term "terrorism" to what had happened. I don't think the Sentinel will retreat from that.
Does that mean, though, that we should extend that judgment to all attacks on civilians? ...

Oh, man, if you can't tell a terrorist until he bombs your town, then you have a problem with language and logic. You're "afraid" that horse is out of the barn? Oh, that horse got blasted out of the barn long since.
See the post below on how PCthink is making a lie of news and art. This guy proves the point.

LINK | Comments (5)

Damn, scrap that convention junket
: Says Reuters:

Iraq has postponed to next April a trade fair aimed at attracting foreign companies to help rebuild the country, a senior official said on Monday, but he blamed a shortage of hotel rooms rather than security concerns.

LINK | Comments (2)

Our man in Kabul
: Ben Hammersley files his first report from Kabul. Damn, I love having a blogger as witness; the viewpoint is fresher, more immediate, less sculpted, more human.

The contrast here between the destruction and the rebirth could not be more marked. The buildings are covered in bullet scars, the horizon is punctuated with bombed out neighbourhoods, and the runway at the airport is lined - and truly lined, like some twisted can-can troupe - with destroyed aircraft. But despite all that, every other shop in this neighbourhood is selling some form of technology. There’s a Dell dealership, with hand painted signs and no electricity; there are shops selling the latest Nokias and extolling the benefits of MMS; I passed a market stall selling pirated versions of Windows XP and the entire Adobe range, and that was next to an entire store of pirate DVDs. Kabul’s ancient position as the trading hub of Central Asia continues: these are the same discs I’ve seen for sale in both Iran and Bangkok for a couple of dollars each. No mac software, dammit. :-)

Go read the rest and getaloada the 9/11 commemmorative Afghan rug he bought.

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August 24, 2003

PC TV
: A great speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival attacks the creeping PCization of TV, popular culture, and the news -- the oversensitivity to sensitivities that ends up adding up to a big lie:

The television industry is so in thrall to political correctness that soap and drama writers now routinely consult pressure groups for advice on what they consider offensive, the Edinburgh Television Festival heard yesterday.
In the annual Alternative MacTaggart Lecture, Rod Liddle, the former editor of Radio 4's Today programme, called on producers to ignore attempts by organisations such as the Commission for Racial Equality, the mental health charity Mind and the anti-smoking group Ash to dictate what is broadcast.
"They hector and harry you into portraying society as they would like it to be, rather than as what it is," Mr Liddle told an audience of broadcasters.
In many cases, the interference was done "with the connivance" of the Government and statutory bodies such as the Independent Television Commission and the BBC's Editorial Policy Unit. The aim was to "bully programme makers into changing the nature of their news programmes, dramas and light entertainment in order to accord with the various agendas pursued by each group"....
He recounted how, before the Iraq war, BBC journalists were summoned to a meeting to discuss how they could cover the conflict without offending Muslims.
Later, he heard a BBC report about a British suicide bomber in Israel. The report concluded - "apropos of nothing at all" - that the vast majority of British Muslims were "utterly opposed" to suicide attacks against Israel.
"When we are forced into making these blithe and comfortable platitudinous asides we do everybody a disservice," he said. In a desire to avoid inflaming religious antagonism, "we massage the truth in order to kid ourselves, and the audience, that that's really the case".
He gave warning that such "small incremental changes" to dramas or news may be well-intentioned, but "before you know it, we're living in a sort of ghastly Sesame Street", bearing no relation to reality.

Of course, this happens here, too: Special-interest pressure groups try to get art created by quota and agenda: don't show smoking; have more of this kind of person or that; don't say that even if people do say it. What it really means is: Be dishonest.
Somebody, please put up the entire text of the speech.

LINK | Comments (2)

Flashmopes
: The world is getting fed up with self-indulgent flash mobs. Says the Scotsman:

Now, the backlash has begun in earnest.
E-mail lists like "antimob" and "slashmob" provide a forum for those who are not totally convinced that flash mobs are an important artistic phenomenon.
Sites like Flashmugging mock the "young, naive, wealthy, bored, fashionistas" who take part in mobs. This spoof site warns that flash muggers stalk these events, quoting one such villain: "It’s simple, just turn up at the arranged meeting point, and hand out a load of fake instructions [proceed to the dark street behind the glue factory, then at exactly 14:45 take out your wallet], these suckers are so hyped-up on their own coolness, that they’d believe anything."
This idea of hijacking mobs is the inspiration for flashhack.blogspot.com, which tells it's readers: "The act isn't altruistic or artistic, the participants are self-absorbed, onlookers are irritated, media suck it in ... Hack the flash. Don't be sheep. Don't follow orders … Mobs are highly suggestible. Given direction, sheep will follow. In fact, the success of the Flash Mob wholly depends on the participants mindlessly following orders … Hand out your own instructions." ...
1. At precisely 14:46, go home.
2. Get a life already.

LINK | Comments (1)

Bustamante and the N word
: Pacific News Service says Bustamante makes California blacks "nervous."

The moment California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante said he was tossing his hat in as a replacement candidate in the recall race, the buzz among blacks was that he was the guy who used the "N" word....
In a February 2001 speech to a group of black trade unionists, Bustamante purportedly slipped and uttered the dreaded "N" word. When a handful of blacks in the audience stormed out in protest, Bustamante backpedaled fast and swore it was a slip of the tongue. He did profuse mea culpas and furiously waved his credentials as a staunch defender of immigrant rights, affirmative action and multiculturalism....
But the anxiety among blacks about Bustamante is less about his careless slip than about the resurfacing of political tensions between many blacks and Latinos....
If Davis continues his downward plunge in the polls, Bustamante's stock will rise even higher among Democrats. That would include black Democrats too, if only it weren't for that "N" word.

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Gawlee, Guber, it's that Gawker girl
: AL.com (one of my day-job services) has a story about our own Elizabeth Spiers, known here as the editor of Gawker, known there as "that Wetumpka girl."

Some of her Gawker dialogue might be considered a little risque for a Wetumpka girl, but fortunately for Spiers, her parents don't spend much time surfing the Internet.
"They kind of vaguely know that I have a media job," she says. "But they don't really have any concept of what Gawker is or what its audience is or really even who 90 percent of the people we talk about are.
"It's really not racy for here, but I think it's very racy for there."

: Where the hell is Wetumpka? Well, halfway between Riddle and Brassel Bottom, and a mere spit away from Eclectic and just down the road from Liberty, Friendship, Seman, and Kid.

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Bye-bye Bush?
: Says a new Newsweek poll:

The survey released Saturday showed that 49 percent of registered voters would not back the president for a second term if the vote were held now. Forty-four percent would support Mr. Bush's re-election.
The poll marked the first time in a Newsweek survey that supporters of Mr. Bush were out-numbered by those who would not like to see him back remain in office....
The Newsweek report attributed the decline in the president's popularity to public disenchantment over the Iraq war. The poll found 69 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the United States will be bogged down for many years in Iraq without achieving its goals there. ...
However, 61 percent still believe the United States was right to take military action against Iraq in March.

The war was a success. But the peace is hell.

LINK | Comments (38)

BBC archives online
: The BBC announced that it will put its whole program archive online for free. [via Dave Winer]
I wonder whether this is a desperate effort to curry favor and increase value as a means of holding onto the license fee. [via Glenn Reynolds]

LINK | Comments (1)

Don't let the border bump you on the ass on the way out
: The Observer's U.S. correspondent, Ed Vulliamy, leaves the U.S. and it appears it's not a minute too soon. He pens a bitter, mean, angry, anti-American (and badly written) farewell piece that is filled with nothing but negativity: terrorist bombs, lynchings, poverty; he sees our world through dung-colored glasses:

America was always a dichotomous, Janus nation - born of a revolution by democratic visionaries such as Tom Paine but built on genocide and enslavement. Enriched by immigration but made greedy by power and wealth. It was always a question of which America was in the ascendancy at a given time. I think that during Clinton's presidency there were elements of that democratic America to the fore. Or at least there were by contrast to a country now redefining its role as an international citizen, a country where democratic rights, enshrined in the Constitution, are eroded largely by consent.

Jeesh.
Good riddance.

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Our boy on the bus
: David Weinberger is blogging from the Dean campaign bus.

On the plane now. It's a chartered 737 sitting on a back leg of the airport. No metal detectors here, but they do a thorough job going through everyone's luggage. The press sits in the back of the plane, the staff in the front. Plastic clumps of grass are taped to the seats because this is a "grassroots" campaign, which is somewhere between charming and hokey.
The Governor enters the plane last of all. (Yes, they wand him before he enters ... you never know, given his stand on gun control, he could be packing heat :)

David is an (unpaid) adviser to the Dean campaign.
Reading this, it would be very smart for a campaign to invite a few unaffiliated bloggers onto the campaign bus: The result would be more human, less jaded, more compelling coverage of a campaign from real people.
Call it grassroots coverage.

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Our man in Kabul
: Ben Hammersley, blogging correspondent, has made it into Afghanistan. He ended up flying in, rather than trekking over the Khyber Pass:

Two days in Dubai, then, instead of the Islamabad-Peshawar-Jalalabad-Kabul route of legend. In many ways I'm relieved. I've been to Peshawar before, two months before 9/11, and it was dodgy then. In a choice between dubious airline and a roadtrip where the Pakistani authorities insist that you take a gunman with you to the border, and I guess it's more calming to take the plane. Of course, the incessant worries about the wings dropping off and suchlike are still there - it's the *Afghan* national airline, after all...

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August 23, 2003

Flashwastes
: Two choices:
(1) Declare flashmobs tired and retired. It was cute for a day. But they are pointless and irritating: just a bunch of rich and wired kids with nothing better to do showing off that they are rich and wired and can afford to waste their time.
(2) Organize a flashmob to actually do something useful: Hey, kids, let's all meet in Central Park at 7:08 and each of us pick up a piece of litter? Or why don't we all meet in downtown Manhattan and give the still-struggling merchants down there a little business? Or let's all show up on the FCC's doorstep and tell them that we want more wireless innovation now. (Special French edition: Let's all show up at an old folks' home, make sure they're not dying of the heat, and bring them a cold Evian.)

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Ayatollah Moore
: Hammihan, an Iranian blogger, gets what's wrong with "Judge" Bubba Moore's refusal to take his religious monument out of a government building. Amazing that the "judge" and his religious extremists don't:

by disobeying the ruling of Alabama's supreme court, Mr. Moore has violated the principle which sets the US government apart from regime's like that which is oppressing the people of Iran. by stating that the word of HIS 'god' shall overrule the laws of the State of Alabama, he has declared that he wishes Alabama to become a theocracy, just like the one in Iran. he has declared himself the representative of 'god' on Earth (or in Alabama), and has allowed himself to destroy the civil institutions of that State based on his religious bigotry. Mr. Moore should move to Iran, and join the Ayatollahs in doing the 'work of god', ie, opressing people and destroying democracy

Amen, brother.

LINK | Comments (7)

Baghdad Bob, pitchman
: Andy the Hobo Traveler in Iraq finds a billboard selling olives and making fun of Baghdad Bob.

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Raindrops on roses and Iranians on Americans
: The American woman married to an Iranian and living in Iran lists the things she likes about Iran, including this:

I like being an American here. Everyone is so nice to me. Everyone seems to think that Americans are wonderful. One restaurant owner had to restrain himself from hugging me when he discovered that I was American. People shake my hand. They talk to me. Sometimes they tell me that they don’t like Bush, but they always tell me how much they like Americans. This is so refreshing after a couple of years of living in Europe where all I heard was how evil Americans were.

Now ain't that a kick in the pants? People are nicer to Americans in Iran -- where, not long ago, mobs called for our demise -- than they are in our ol' pal Europe.

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If you can't stand the heat, get out of France
: Mark Steyn on the incredible scandal of 10,000 dead from heat in France:

'The US and British armies have entered the gates of hell," thundered George Galloway last month. "Soon it will be 100 degrees at midnight in Baghdad, but there will be no respite from the need for full body armour."
As usual, George was a little off. The gates of hell are on the périphérique and it's 100 degrees at midnight in the pissoir on the Metro. To date, two US soldiers are believed to have succumbed to the heat in Iraq, whereas over 10,000 people have succumbed to it in France....
Certainly, Iraq has its problems. Jacques Chirac, en vacances just up the road from me in North Hatley, Quebec, took time out of his three-week holiday to issue a statement on events in Baghdad, where 20 people died on Tuesday. But he didn't bother to interrupt his vacation to issue a statement on events in France, where so many people have died, the funeral homes are standing room only and they're having to store bodies in the freezers at the fruit and veg markets....
And where are the Red Cross and Oxfam and Human Rights Watch and all the other noisy humanitarians? If 10,000 Iraqis had died of dysentery on George W Bush's watch, you'd never hear the end of it....
France isn't on the edge, it's in the abyss. When I motored round Iraq a couple of months ago, the hospital wards were well below capacity. Yet in France the entire health system – or that percentage of it not spending August at the beach – is stretched beyond its limits (35 hours a week, 44 weeks a year). Why aren't Médecins Sans Frontières demanding to be allowed in to take over?
There's an old, cynical formula for the weight accorded different disasters on American TV news. It runs something like: one dead American = 10 dead Israelis = 100 dead Russians = 1,000 dead Bangladeshis. But 10,000 French can die, and even the French don't seem to care – or not too much, and not with any great urgency....

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August 22, 2003

Doubtful
: Many are pointing to this alleged space image of the U.S. during the blackout. I don't believe it. Most of New Jersey, for example, had power and thus light. The dark dozen was not so clean and clear. I smell Photoshop. Calling Dr. Snopes.

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Fox loses
: Franken wins:

"There are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case," said U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who added that the motion for an injunction was "wholly without merit."

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In lieu of flowers... throw da bum out
: In her obit, a dead Wisconsin woman's heirs suggest donations to anti-Bush causes: "Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush." The obit.

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It's as if somebody changed my underwear and I didn't notice
: Google just changed my toolbar without asking me or letting me know. Not evil, perhaps, but freaky and frightening nonetheless.
: Note the comment: I'm not alone. All over the Internet now, people are "freaking out" at the change. I'll just bet some nervous Google user is right now worried that a worm did it.
Not smart, Google. I don't like somebody else driving my car when I'm in the driver's seat.

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Back to business
: One irony of a Schwarzenegger victory would be that personal peccadilloes may matter less. Arnold has essentially acknowledged all his, shall we say, human weaknesses; he mentioned womanizing on Tonight. Roger Simon says Hollywood heavyweights will start coming out with an army of skeletons from Arnold's closet. Says Page Six:

Cybill Shepherd is freaked out by the prospect of the Austrian-born action hero in the executive mansion.
"That would be the worst tragedy in the history of California," Shepherd hyperventilated to "Access Hollywood."
"I think that we are the laughing stock of the world, with Arnold Schwarzenegger running [for] governor," Shepherd said. "I think he's a real hypocrite. I think he has a past that is going to come out, and I'm not going to mention what it is, but it's not going to be pretty."

I predict that things will come out -- and they will make not one bit of difference; the voters won't care and probably will expect such behavior from Arnold (and those throwing stones at him out of their own Bel Air glass houses). If the dirt flies and if Arnold wins, we'll then have a womanizing, steroid-slurping, inhaling governor and that will make it harder to act shocked and offended the next time a mere politician or president is caught doing something human. And I think that's a good thing, a damned good thing. We would get back to judging politicians on the basis of job performance, not morality (as if anyone ever thought politicians were moral anyway).

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Subscribe to The Week -- an ad
: Note that I'm shilling for The Week magazine with an ad on the right and a text ad every day.
I'm doing this for three reasons:
First, I like The Week. It's a weblog without the links. It's smart, informative, opinionated. I said that long before I met anyone from the magazine. (In fact, I blogged my tribute to the magazine back in June, 2002). But then I met the folks at the Week and I ended up liking them as much as I like their magazine.
Second, I've been suggesting to the people at The Week that they sell subscriptions on weblogs because it's their perfect audience and -- here's the point -- because webloggers can make money that way.
So this is a test: Can a weblog sell subscriptions to a magazine?
If it can, weblogs can sell other things.
And if it can do that, maybe a weblogger can actually make money.
It makes sense: This is a smart, engaged audience, highly targeted, a great environment for advertising.
So stack the deck. Fix the test. Buy a subscription.
It's risk-free: Try four issues free; if you don't like it, cancel. If you do, thank me.
[And, yes, I get a cut of the revenue. If this works, this offer will be open to other webloggers to also get their cut. So subscribe!] [/ad]

: Oops. I apologize for sticking that obnoxious text ad inbetween every post. I intended to put the obnoxious text ad only inbetween every day. So I'm a bad page coder. Don't hold that against me. Don't let that stop you from subscribing to The Week. (Sorry. Couldn't help myself. I'm getting carried away with capitalism and the need to succeed.) If you subscribe, I promise I won't use popups.

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Reparations and racism
: I've long dismissed the fringe calls for reparations payments for slavery for many reasons -- because the sins of the fathers are not the sins of the gerat-great-grandchildren, because many (perhaps most) Americans today are descended from people who came here after the Civil War (how do you determine who should pay and who should be paid?), and mostly because this feeling of entitlement via suit has to end somewhere: The logical and absurd extension of this, I've always said, is that the Jews should sue the Egyptians for reparations for slavery under Pharoah.
Well now, Via Memri, the service that translated Middle Eastern media, here is an absurd and sick twist on that: The Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi interviewed Dr. Nabil Hilmi, dean of the faculty of law at the University of Al-Zaqaziq, who is working on a lawsuit on behalf of Egyptians in Switzerland against "all the Jews of the world" because, when they fled Egypt, they took with them gold and cooking utensils.

The theft was not limited to gold alone. The thieves stole everything imaginable. They emptied the Egyptian homes of cooking utensils. One of the women approached Pharaoh, her eyes downcast, and said that her Jewish neighbor [don't you mean "slave?" -ed] who lived in the house on the right of her house had come to her and asked to borrow her gold items, claiming she had been invited to a wedding… The Jewish neighbor took [the items] and promised to return them the next day. A few minutes later, the neighbor to the left knocked on the door and asked to borrow the cooking utensils, because she was having guests for dinner. Using this same deceitful system, they took possession of all the cooking utensils...
Taking posession of the gold was understandable. This is clear theft of a host country's resources and treasure, something that fits the morals and character of the Jews...."

Sick, offensive, stupid. Odd, it doesn't appear on Al Ahram's English-language site.

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Gained in the translation
: NPR ran a correction this morning. Yesterday, they translated a crowd's chant in Israel as, "Arabs must die." Today, they say the correct translation was, "We want revenge." Yeah, close.

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Don't encourage them!
: AOL Journals (aka blogs) are off to a good start but I smell trouble with this promo on the Journals home page:

Make Spike a Star
You know your pooch is the best dog in America, heck on the planet! Don't keep those cute photos and funny antics to yourself. Create a Web page for your dog and show him off to the world. It only takes a few minutes and he'll love you for it.

No, no, not more dog blogs! What's next? No, please, no: cat blogs...

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Freedom of religion
: The religious nuts who want God in government refuse to understand that the Constitution is their best protection.
They want prayer in school. They want the 10 Commandments in court.
They want to be ayatollahs. And fine for them as long as they are the ayatollahs; they'd have their way.
But what happens when I win the election? When I'm America's ayatollah, I will decree gay marriage a fine thing. I will make abortion legal. I will get rid of laws concerning sexual behavior of adults. I will free Howard Stern to say whatever the F he wants on the radio. I will decree nudity a matter of free speech, bringing breasts to billboards as my little celebration of God's creation and my effort to beautify America.
Yes, I'd make a fine ayatollah, if I do say so myself.
Don't you see, Bubbas? Once you open the door for one religion to be in government and schools and courts, you open the door for that religion to be a religion other than yours. And that closes the door on yours. Once you let one religion in, you kick other religions out. That is wh we let none in.
That is precisely the protection of Constitution affords all faiths.
Our founding fathers were damned smart.
And you, Bubbas, are frighteningly stupid.

: I'm getting hell for using the apparently unPC term "Bubba." Fine, I apologize to all the shit-kickers who kicked the shit out of me for that. But I'll still call "Judge" Moore Bubba because I do want to insult him and if Bubba is an insult then Bubba is what I will call him.

: Also note the comments and the effort to say that a little God here or a few commandments there must be OK. Slippery slope, folks. Once you have someone saying what is and what isn't OK religion, then you're in trouble. Don't cross that line. To a Buddhist or a Hindu, the 10 Commandments aren't kosher; to an atheist, yes, God does not compute.
Separation of church and state is not anti-God or anti-church. The Constitution is strongly pro-God and pro-Church precisely because it protects your God and your Church (or whatever) from government interference. You'd think that anti-government religionists would be the first to get that, but they will be the last.

: Update: The woman who brought the case against "Judge" Moore -- and the decidely unChristian behavior of alleged Christians against her. God bless her; she's the one defending both God and the Constitution.

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Staff blogger
: David Weinberger is going to travel with his boy, Howard Dean, as official campaign blogger.

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Hyperlocal radio
: Glenn Reynolds is celebrating that FCC honcho Michael Powell is talking about getting moving with low-power FM stations. There's one thing more that they could do: Open it up not only to noncommercial use (that's the law today) but also to small-scale, local commercial use. If you really want this thing to grow, then let the people who make the investment of money and time at least make their money back. That will energize what otherwise is bound to be a listless media fizzle.

: See also Virginia Postrel on hyperlocal radio here and here.

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Us v. them
: Peoria Pundit Bill Dennis takes off on the is-it-blog-or-is-it-journalism discussion with a comparison of blogs and big-media "j-blogs:"

Blogs: Blogs give the power of the press to those who don’t own a press.
J-blogs: Owned by those who already own the presses....

Blogs: Bloggers often spend a great deal of time designing sites that fit their personality and tastes.
J-blogs: Look like every other page on the company Website.

Blogs: Bloggers have a burning need to express their opinions and thoughts.
J-blogs: Most j-bloggers are already published every day in the regular newspaper....

Blogs: Unedited nature of blogs is part of their charm.
J-blogs: Newspaper culture says “unedited” equals “anarchy.”

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August 21, 2003

Put another shrimp on the cross
: Churchmen Down Under have created the Aussie Bible. Really, they have. A verse in the local vulgate:

The angel said to her, 'G'day Mary. You are a pretty special sheila. God has his eye on you'.

And:

This made Herod as jumpy as a wallaby on hot rocks and stirred up the whole town. So Herod got some of his cronies together – smart blokes who had more degrees than a thermometer – and asked them where the Promised One was supposed to be born.

I'm going to start working on the Jersey Bible:

Yo, Mary, listen up. You're preggers, you hear? You gotta problem wid dat?"

Or perhaps the Bama Bible:Bubba, y'all shalt be bull-headed and intolerant, y'hear?