Nick Denton

Surprise me
Matt Welch is a friend of mine, so take anything I say with a pinch of salt. That said: take a break from this page and read him. He's a warblogger, and can bash the Saudis as well as any of that crowd. But at least he's not predictable. He'll lay into Bush over trade or coddling of the Saudis. And he even dares give Chomsky some credit, in a recent post. My main complaint against neocon bloggers such as Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds, though I read them regularly, is that I know what they're going to say. Reynolds will never resist a chance to bash a European, academic, or an international organization, and preferably all three together. Sullivan will always find a way to give the benefit of the doubt to Bush; he toes the Republic party line as well as any political operative. That gets tedious. Matt at least surprises me.

Matt Welch #

Matt Welch loses patience
"Bush has had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the moral high ground, convince friends and enemies alike that there was a principle worth fighting for after the Sept. 11 massacre … but between his Saudi-coddling and domestic-industry protection, I’m afraid that moral capital is being squandered. The United States is, and should be, more than a nation-state that uses its power to maximize short-term national self-interest."

Matt Welch #

Have I got news for you
Non-Brits turn away now. This is a transcript of 'Have I got news for you', which is the British version of Politically Incorrect, but funnier. The host, a man called Angus Deayton for whom the word sardonic was invented, was recently caught out by the tabloids. He snorted, he did have sex with that woman, but he didn't pay her. So the difference between the US and the UK: Rather than running away to Key West, Deayton was on the show as usual this week. And, rather than embarrassed avoidance of his whole coke-and-whores extravaganza, the guests ribbed him mercilessly. Read the transcript. It's very funny.

HIGNFY transcript #

Rebecca Mead on eBay
Rebecca Mead's seminal piece in the New Yorker on blogging, and the budding relationship between Meg Hourihan and Jason Kottke, is for auction on eBay. I have some screenshots from the early days of nickdenton.org, but it's not quite the same.

"You've Got Blog" story [eBay via Jim Romenesko and Jason Kottke] #

Naming and shaming
We all have a few, friends who set up weblogs, dabbled for a few days, and gave up. We have to give them some tough love. Tough love like Jeff Jarvis gave me, when I briefly preferred scuba-diving in Thailand to blogging from the local internet cafe. So, I propose we all think of blogger friends who have fallen off the wagon, name them, and shame them into writing. I'll make a start with three Anglo-Californian friends of mine. But, beforehand, here's a hilarious sample from Gaby's blog:

Feb 12: OK, so now I am pissed (kind of). Nick is threatening to put a link to my blog on his site, and of course I am ashamed of it in its current state. His control should motivate me to clean up my act and get going, but right now I have just too many other things to think about and can't set aside time to blog regularly.

Nov 29: Ok, so another month has gone by and I feel like I am stuck in a never ending loop. I could just repeat the entry of 10/26....

Oct 26: God, it has been ages since I wrote in my blog. October just slipped away from me, busy at work, travelling, partying. November resolution is to not give up!

· Gaby Darbyshire [ignore her threats to retaliate against exposure]

· John Hunt [wow, nice design]

· David Galbraith [isn't he the semantic web guy?] #

Episodio II: Elo ataque de los clones
El Pais, which consistently produces the best information graphics of any newspaper, has a guide to the Star Wars story. A list of characters, a map of the Star Wars galaxy, categorized by episode. Now, if only the script had been this coherent.

The universe of George Lucas [El Pais via Jeff Jarvis] #

Six Feet Under
Prediction: the turn of the century will be seen as a coming of age for American television drama. The West Wing is a delight of clever dialogue; The Sopranos' conceit, the mundanity of the mafia, provides endless material; and Six Feet Under is an atmospheric meditation on life and death. These are the cultural highlights of our times. And the irony is that much of this great drama was produced as a direct result of the fragmentation of television audiences that the industry so feared. Six Feet Under, as this article on the show says, brings in about 4m viewers. That audience wouldn't be enough to sustain a series on network television; but the economics work for HBO. I always had a problem with cultural elitism, as long as it was funded, as in Europe, by the state. Capitalist cultural elitism, on the other hand, is just dandy; and I'm an addict.

Alan Ball's Life After Death [Washington Post] #

Wednesday, May 29

Better the devil we don't know
"It may not be prudent yet to speak the truth out loud, that the Saudis are our enemies. But they should know that it is increasingly apparent to the American people that they are effectively waging war against us." As much as Thanksgiving turkey, or Memorial Day barbeques, the House of Saud brings all Americans together. Michael Barone, in this punchy article in U.S. News, liberals, Jews, neocons, feminists, gays, republicans, leftists, all the colors of the rainbow, all united in disgust for the breeding parasites of the Saudi royal family. Everybody except, conspicuously absent, the Bush family, a few Texas oilmen and the congenitally timid State Department. What's the case for leaving the Saudis in power: that they're the devils we know? At some point, the West must conclude: better the devil we *don't* know, than the devil we know. What the hell: throw the dice in the Middle East. Let chaos reign. Remake the map. And, if we don't like the outcome: throw the dice again.
Michael Barone on "our enemies the Saudis" [U.S. News] #

Arafat chips - no, really
Were I writing for an English audience, I could make a groan-worthy pun, something to do with things burnt to a crisp. But I'm not, so I won't. "The chips are bagged in Palestinian colors — green, red, black and white — and carry the likeness of a rotund and wide-eyed Arafat, saluting with one hand and holding a Palestinian flag in the other. He's dressed in his trademark military fatigues and black-and-white checked headgear."

Arafat Potato Chips Take Egyptian Market by Storm [Fox News] #

All networked out
I've finally given in to Ryze, the online networking community which friends have been telling me about for months. The reason for my reluctance: I'm all networked out. Having been involved in an events and networking business, even the thought of the Ryze social earlier this month in New York exhausted me. I have to admit: the online service is neat, and I spent longer on it than I'd expected. The friends of friends feature worked well, better the same feature on Sixdegrees. It is interesting and useful to know that Vadim knows Scott. And it's set me thinking about weblogs, blogrolling, and the information embedded within the sidebar buddy lists on weblogs. But - back to Ryze - who on earth are these people who claim hundreds of friends? I'm not sure their feelings are reciprocated.

Ryze #

Blog geekery: instruction manuals for the major weblog tools
Essential Blogging Public Review [O'Reilly Network] #

Tuesday, May 28

War baby
New York obstetricians are predicting a baby boom, conceived in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. "This was kind of a wake-up call for people,'' says Dr. Paul Kastell, an obstetrician and professor at Long Island College Hospital in New York City. "They saw the towers burning. And when they got home they said, 'You know, it's never going to be the right time. We should start now.''' This is a cute story, and a sign of the resilience of New York. On the other hand, there's been a baby boom in Gaza over the last 20 years in defiance of Israeli occupation. I presume that's equally touching, to supporters of the Palestinian cause.
Post-Sept. 11 Baby Boom Expected [AP] #

Sample business agreements
Anyone know of a good source for content licensing template agreements?
Morebusiness.com #

Put your blog on the map
Here's an incredibly cool interactive map of New York blogger locations. If you've got a blog, just plug in your subway stop, and up you pop on the map. I'm the guy at Bleecker Street on the 6.

nyc bloggers #

America's odious farm bill
"[I]f several million people in South Asia burn to death in radioactive fire, it's going to be hard not to wonder if a little less concern for North Carolina's electoral votes might have helped avert it. Likewise, just how many farm-belt Congressional seats, in both parties, are worth grinding down African farmers for another generation? America is a great country, bursting with high ideals, and governed by a bunch of babies. Grow up."

And yet [Patrick Nielsen Hayden] #

An email from Patrick Nielsen Hayden
'For what it's worth, and speaking as a guy who's ragged on the Europeans in
this food fight, I think you're right when you say "The US is a better
society precisely because the America has had the capacity for self-doubt,
self-criticism, and self-improvement, which the Islamic world lost back in
the 14th century." The question is whether, indeed, "those qualities are little in evidence
right now." Certainly many Americans feel fed up with certain kinds of
European criticism, something you've quoted me as remarking on. But is
that actually the same thing as entirely losing "the capacity for
self-doubt, self-criticism, and self-improvement"? Probably not. I think
American self-criticism is, on balance, pretty robust, although right now
Americans are particularly cranky about listening to Europeans, which (not
surprisingly) makes Europeans think America isn't listening to anyone.'

Patrick Nielsen Hayden #

Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus
Robert Kagan: "... On major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory — the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways."

Power and Weakness [Policy Review] #

European misanthrope, by Olivier Travers
"Like Molière's Misanthrope's hate of mankind, our dislike is rooted in demanding love. Nick, to paraphrase Charles Schultz, wouldn't you happen to love America, but it's Americans you can't stand?"

Olivier Travers #

A baby girl and her grandmother died
Ganit Margolinski, who was at a store next door with her son, told the Israel radio: "I saw children lying wounded on the ground asking for help. Mothers threw themselves on top of their children, but we couldn't help them. It was difficult to see bleeding mothers lying on top of their children, protecting them and not caring about themselves, screaming, `Save my child!'"

New Arab Bombing in Israel Deepens a Sense of Dismay [NYT] #

Monday, May 27

Nick Denton, anti-American
I don't know what's happening to me. I've always loved the US. The history, the Federalist Papers, science fiction, Hollywood, quirky independent movies, Central Park, bagels, the familiarity of the Upper West Side, the West Wing, the New York Times on a Sunday, New York, all the more after September 11th, drinking places without carpets, strange food and strange sex, landing men on the moon, digital technology, the nations come together, the scale, the presumption of liberty, the sense of possibility, the eager embrace of the future.

   I love it all, and not as a phenomenon to be observed from a distance, or contained within the USA. I want the whole planet, the whole solar system, the whole galaxy, to be full of bustling humanity, and if the price of that is a McDonalds on Pluto, I'll close my eyes, think of a Tuscan trattoria, and order a Big Mac and fries.

   But here's the confession: in the last few months, I've become one of those carping Europeans. I don't think I'm reverting to type; my belief in the US system can withstand an economic setback and a government I don't much like. My illusions about US politics haven't shattered, because I didn't have any to begin with. I'm more hawkish on the war than most Americans.

   So what's wrong? Well, specifically, a trade policy which stifles the poor, the short-sighted support of oppressive regimes, and contempt for the country's natural allies. It's something deeper too. I'm glad that the US intelligentsia has dropped the moral relativism of the late 20th century. As Rudy Giuliani said in Sunday's HBO documentary on the September 11th attacks: we're right, and they're wrong. But the US is a better society precisely because the America has had the capacity for self-doubt, self-criticism, and self-improvement, which the Islamic world lost back in the 14th century. Those qualities are little in evidence right now; the US is about as tolerant of constructive European criticism as it is of the rantings of Osama bin Laden's latest video. #

Women whistleblowers
Anyone else noticed how the two whistleblowers of our time - Coleen Rowley of the FBI and Sherron Watkins of Enron - are both women? A few theories: one, women are more likely to be middle managers than senior executives, and middle managers are the ones who blow whistles; two, in a largely male environment, women aren't part of the gang, so loyalty doesn't get so much in the way of principle; and, finally, they're less afraid of getting fired because they have a life and identity out of work. All generalizations, I know, but there is a pattern.

· 'Just-the-facts' FBI agent finds profile raised [Pioneer Press]

· 'Enron Whistleblower' Sherron Watkins [Time] #

Sunday, May 26

West Virginia
Paul Krugman lays into the Bush administration's trade policy. "What it's really about, of course, is raw, short-sighted politics — the same politics that has led the administration to revoke crucial trade access to Caribbean nations, with devastating prospective effects on their economies, to help out a single South Carolina congressman. In the case of steel, Karl Rove weighed three electoral votes in West Virginia against the world trading system built up over 60 years, and the answer was apparently obvious."

America the Scofflaw [Paul Krugman] #

It's the hypocrisy I can't stand
Let's get this straight. For the first time since the colonial era, African leaders such as Uganda's Museveni are at least paying lip service to free markets. Their main request: trade, not aid; a hand-up, not a hand-out. Which should be music to capitalist ears.

   So, what do we do? Well, Paul O'Neill, the Treasury Secretary, goes round Africa with Bono. Some preferential access for African goods, as long as the continent represents a tiny proportion of world trade. An increase in the miserly US foreign aid budget. All good stuff.

   And then - whoops, done it again - the US government puts African farmers out of business by providing even more lavish subsidies to Louisiana rice magnates. I propose a new slogan for development policy: a hand-out, then a slap-down. I don't mind the US pursuing its interests; it's the hypocrisy I can't stand.

   From the New York Times: "Activists in Ghana said the United States government had been hypocritical by demanding, through the International Monetary Fund, that Ghana phase out subsidies for rice, a food in which it was once self-sufficient, while increasing subsidies for American farmers. At the Makola market, a teeming bazaar in central Accra, vendors sell produce from all over the country — and rice from the United States and Thailand."

Seeking Trade, Africans Find Western Barriers [New York Times via InstaPundit] #

Alphabet soup
Want to know why the US federal government was no match for Al-Qaeda? Try this incredible sentence from an FBI memo, an explanation of the failure to investigate links between Zacarias Moussaoui and the Septmeber 11th plot: "The Minneapolis agents' initial thought was to obtain a criminal search warrant, but in order to do so, they needed to get FBI Headquarters' (FBIHQ's) approval in order to ask for DOJ OIPR's approval to contact the United States Attorney's Office in Minnesota."

Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller [Time] #

Meta Linker
More weblog geekery: Meta Linker automatically generates a link to the Blogdex discussion on a particular article. So no more hunting around for permalinks to other blogs, or that nagging sense of guilt, that you're passing an item off as your own discovery.

Meta Linker #

Saturday, May 25

Citibank
Okay, it's unlikely anybody in their customer service department is reading this, but Citibank sucks, and I'm going to vent anyway. It's the most international of financial institutions, with branches in London, Budapest, New York, San Francisco, all the places I hop between. One seamless global financial network, whisking money around at the speed of light, just like in the ads, right? Well, actually: the bank operations are largely separate. Citibank in the US has no idea of the status of a UK account; communication even between New York and California isn't much better. Branch customer service is just as disorganized as anywhere else: it took me three months to get my new account set up, partly because Roger photocopied the wrong page of my passport, twice. And I've just found out that online broking, supposedly integrated with online banking, hasn't worked since the merger last year with Salomon Smith Barney. The only thing that's cool is the online wire transfer facility. I would short Citibank stock and buy Paypal except, oh yes, the online broking doesn't work. This reminds me why I liked the new economy: it was supposed to sweep away dinosaurs like Citibank.

Citibank.com #

The melting pot
So how is it again that the UK, in fifty years, has done more to integrate its black ethnic minority than the US in 200? "Data from the 2001 census due to be released later this year is expected to confirm that Britain has one of the highest rates in the world of inter-ethnic relationships and, consequently, mixed race people."

Changing face of Britain [BBC] #

Friday, May 24

Citysearch
If you haven't been for a while, check out Citysearch. The online listings service has been overhauled. One of the best redesigns I've seen. The searches seem faster; the look is clean; and personalization is easy. I bet this does more for their usage and revenues than any marketing.

Citysearch New York #

Airless, lifeless, pockmarked
Rick Steiner, a fisheries professor at the University of Alaska and environmental activist, is to propose this weekend at a space development conference that the United Nations designate the moon one of its World Heritage Sites, reserved for peaceful and scientific purposes. "The bottom line here is: Let's go and explore our universe, but let's not go as Genghis Khan," he says. "Let's go as Mother Teresa."

I just don't get this, or the people who are worried that we're going to contaminate Mars. The moon is an airless, lifeless, pockmarked ball of rock. I would far rather industrial development took place off-planet, or in Antarctica, for that matter. English meadows, or California redwood forests, are far more valuable to me than a wasteland that most human beings will never visit. And, if anyone is worried that development will spoil the view of the full moon, we can always put the industrial zone on the far side.

Should U.N. Make the Moon Off-Limits for Development? [WSJ] #

Wednesday, May 22

Sometimes I have mixed feelings about search engines
The Daniel Pearl execution video #

Who lost Europe?
Hawkish Americans may not care about Europe's squealing. The popularity of American foreign policy is not an end in itself. But I hope they are at least aware that their only real ally is gradually slipping away. And it would be a mistake to think that the European masses will reveal their pro-American loyalty if only Europe's snotty political establishment were removed. Read this, from a sensible and gloomy piece from the Guardian: "Mutual prejudices have rarely been stronger: American perceptions of rampant anti-Semitism in the old continent are matched by European - especially French - scorn for the death penalty and unbridled capitalism. Hostility to Europe on the American right now matches traditional anti-Americanism on the European left."

Bush comes face to face with Europe's distrust [Guardian] #

Tuesday, May 21

The coming co-option of weblogs
Clay Shirky: “You can be sure, as with any technology, that once it becomes good, people will begin renaming what they have. Watch the content management vendors start claiming that they have blogging functions. That’s an inevitability.”

Internet navigators think small [MSNBC] #

Blogging conferences
The change merchants have been predicting the overturning of newspapers by weblogs. But weblogs are having a far more powerful impact on conferences, which is the real point of the article below from the Guardian. My recommendation to conference organizers: hire some webloggers to report on your conference, and link to other posts; put up a conference news blog on the web; make that the default page on the internet terminals; and inject weblog commentary into the discussion. For instance, the moderator ought to be browsing weblogs in real time for points and questions to put to the panelists.

Time to blog on [Guardian] #

The Wired Sci-Fi Top 20
A list of sci-fi movies that will decidedly not include Attack of the Clones. I wanted to like the latest instalment of Star Wars, really. I was ready to lay down my cultural snobbery. And the planetscapes were beautiful: I would have been happy with a simple exhibition of CGI wizardry. But the plot just does not work. Does. Not. Work. The climactic battle between the clones and the droids? Well, who cares? Space operas are supposed to be about good and evil; the Attack of the Clones is a choreographed conflict between evil, and more evil. Too complicated for me.

The Wired Sci-Fi Top 20 [Wired Magazine] #

Every presenter's nightmare
Students at a posh English public school - that's fee-paying high school - looked up from their exams to find porn on the projector. "The invigilator, maths teacher Richard Jowett, appeared to have been looking at the material on his personal computer, forgetting it was linked up to the monitor."

Teacher displays porn during exam [BBC] #

Transatlantic contempt
"The European intellectual and political elites have long had a monopoly over transatlantic contempt; but the US is now matching insult for insult. And Europeans need to turn around the question and ask themselves: do we realize how much *we* are hated?"

Mad as hell [Nick Denton, for Management Today] #

Tony Blair, straddling the great rift
“I regard it as one of my tasks to say to people the whole time, don’t pull apart Europe and America. The only people that rejoice in those circumstances are the bad guys and America and Europe should stand together on most issues."

Only the bad guys [Times]
#

Monday, May 20

How to crack a copy-protected music CD
Buy a dozen supercomputers, crunch through zillions of calculations to break the code. Alternatively, take a felt-tip pen, and black out the edge of the CD.

"Copy-proof" CDs cracked with 99-cent marker pen [Reuters via Ken Layne] #

10 reasons not to see Clones
A taster: "George Lucas is often praised as a master storyteller but what kind of storyteller begins with episodes four, five and six - sorry, Episodes IV, V and VI - then proceeds to Episodes I, II and III? Surely, on page one of The Storyteller's Manual it tells you to begin at the beginning."
Attack of the moans [Guardian] #

Sunday, May 19

Nothing changes
Israelis gloss over the massacre of Deir Yassin, in which Jewish forces in 1947 destroyed a Palestinian village and killed some 110 of its inhabitants. Yes, it was a massacre. But the reaction was also an example of the self-destructive hysteria of the Arabs. In the PBS/BBC mega-documentary on the Arab-Israel conflict, which I've been watching this weekend, a veteran Palestinian journalist describes how the massacre of Deir Yassin was embroidered with stories of rape. Think Jenin. "He said: We must make the most of it. So he wrote a press release saying children were murdered, women were raped, all kinds of atrocities. He said: we have to say this, so that the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews. As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror."

The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs [Amazon] #

Saturday, May 18

Star Wars: Ken Layne does cultural criticism
Ken Layne hasn't seen the Clones yet, but he has a beautifully rambling post about the original Star Wars, and its place in the culture of US suburbia in the late 20th century. I'd think that Ken was one of those pretentious post-modern cultural critics; except I know Ken, he loves Star Wars, he loves America, and he can write. "There's a meal scene early on, with Luke and his stepparents, and it's all so utterly common and grim with the tupperware and blue milk and stiff conversation. And then Luke's standing outside, with that fake Wagner soundtrack (like I knew who Wagner was back then) and the hazy desert sky and those twin suns. He's standing alone in the dust with his whole crazy life ahead and no clue what's coming next. And he's pissed off, depressed, moody, romantic. Jesus, he's never even been to the big port town, Mos Eisley. He's like a kid in a San Diego suburb who hasn't even been to Tijuana."

Ken Layne #

Friday, May 17

The irresponsible superpower
As Tobey Maguire is advised in Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. The US may be the world's only superpower, but it's behaving like a moral pygmy by blocking goods from poor countries. Even America's friends are disgusted. Here's an extraordinary joint statement by Horst Köhler, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Mike Moore, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, and James Wolfensohn, World Bank president: "How can leaders in developing countries or in any capital argue for more open economies if leadership in this area is not forthcoming from wealthy nations?"

Washington under fire for 'damaging' trade curbs [Financial Times] #

Bush, welfare queen
Peggy Noonan forgives Bush for the farm bill, and steel tariffs: it's what he needs to do to maintain political support for the war, she says. Oh, come off it. He's just caved, and agreed to policies which are bad for the US economy and throw other nations into poverty. He caved. Say it. I respect Bush's prosecution of the war, and his managerial ability, but people have given Bush the benefit of the doubt for 18 months, for all his life, for that matter. On vision, articulacy, trade, the Saudis, the Middle East, global development. It takes a really smart guy like Andrew Sullivan to justify such dumb actions. Let's just give him the benefit of the doubt? Bush is the welfare queen of benefit of the doubt; it's time he fended for himself.

Dubya's New Deal [Peggy Noonan] #

Thursday, May 16

Rejection Line
You might have heard of the Rejection Line. But did you know it's a cunning experiment in meme-spreading by an MIT Media Lab alumnus. Jonah Peretti, the creator, was also behind the "Sweatshop" Nike brouhaha. He designs memes for a living. Feel manipulated now?

RejectionLine.com #

Incompetent United Nations
At dinner, an acquaintance of mine, high up in one of the major United Nations agencies:"Yes, sure, 10% of the people are highly able, and committed; but, of the remainder, 30% are mediocre, and the rest are simply incompetent. Why don't we fire them? Because it takes two years, and you have to show that you're hiring women and people from developing countries in their place." #

Bag lady
Overheard, just now, on Bleecker Street. A young, incipient bag lady, talking to herself: "Twenty years ago I could have got a place for $200."
#

Eight months
I'd be surprised if there hadn't been warnings before September 11th. There are *always* warnings before a disaster. And the people in charge always fail to connect the dots. That's why disasters happen. Well, actually, this particular disaster happened because 19 murderous Saudis and Egyptians crashed planes into buildings, but you know what I mean. Anyway, what I can't understand: why on earth has it taken so long for this to come to light? Eight months. The administration should have opened up the records as soon as the dust settled. And don't give me reasons of security. Hasn't Bush learned anything from Clinton: it's always the cover-up that gets you.

Bush Was Warned bin Laden Wanted to Hijack Planes [New York Times] #

Blogging on the Microsoft dollar
Derek Brown, group marketing manager at Microsoft's mobility division, now has a seven-figure annual budget to market to small site owners: "Many of these influencers are hubs of information that can go out and touch lots of other people."

Hand-Held Makers Woo 'Influencers' For Cheap Marketing in Slowdown [Wall Street Journal] #

Wednesday, May 15

Online advertising: it's back
Rick Bruner's Executive Summary carries five reasons why, despite all the gloom, online advertising actually turned the corner in 2001.
Click below for Rick's points. I'd add one more: the success of keyword-targeted text ads. The Overture model works;
Google is hiring sales people to sell its AdWords; and my bet is that these ad networks will extend their reach to smaller
sites. Imagine an API to Google AdWords which would allow any specialist media site owner to plug in relevant cost-per-click
links. For instance the 802.11b site could subscribe -- self-service -- to an AdWords feed for
"802.11b" and "Wi-Fi" paid links. The only thing stopping Google: the potential for fraud, and the administrative costs of
prevention.
Executive Summary #

Bush the protector
Remember the spin on the steel tariffs? It was supposed to be a tactical retreat, the price of victory in the main struggle: fast-track authority for the administration to negotiate trade agreements. Well, that's looking questionable now too, after a poison pill amendment to the legislation. U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick denounced the Dayton-Craig proposal as "protectionism under a procedural cover." He said it would "cripple America's ability to open markets around the world."

Bush Loses a Vote on Trade [Washington Post] #

Malcolm Gladwell dissed me
Just back from the Social Network Soiree. This was a panel, with Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, fave book of bloggers, viral marketer diehards and MIT Media Lab academics who wish they had invented sixdegrees.com. And, afterwards, we all got to play with our meme tags, which tracked connections in the room. I have bad luck with machines at the moment, and my meme tag kept telling me "stack error" and wiping out all the names I had so painstakingly built up. I go up to Gladwell, not quite sure what I'm going to say except: I liked your book. We try to bump tags, but my one isn't responding. He says he'd better move on to someone who is going to improve his connectedness score. Handshakes don't count. He was joking - I think.

Social Network Soiree #

Tuesday, May 14

Saudi popups
Two of my favorite things - Saudi Arabia and popup ads - in one delicious package. I particularly like the catchline: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - allies against terrorism. Cue: nausea.

Popup via SubLunar Orbit #

Aberration
George Bush Senior described his son's protectionism on steel - which hurts countries such as Ukraine and South Korea - as an aberration. Here's another one: Bush yesterday signed a bill increasing subsidies to American farmers. That will damage countries with competitive agricultural sectors such as Argentina and Brazil. Now how about a tightening of textile quotas, to catch any developing countries that the president may have missed?

Reversing Course, Bush Signs Bill Raising Farm Subsidies [NY Times] #

Monday, May 13

Idiot's guide to weblogs
A lot of discussion about weblogs recently, which may seem incomprehensible or absurdly self-referential to the average reader. So, for all the normal people out there who don't spend all their day reading blogs, here's a good guide to the phenomenon. It's a transcript of an interview on CNN, and has a plainspoken quality that weblogs ought to have but often lack. [For the record, the interviewee missed the two most popular weblog publishing systems, Blogger and Movable Type, and cites a discussion forum as a weblog. But, hey, let's not be too picky.]

Blogs take Web diaries to the next level - May 10, 2002 [CNN] #

Make sure you put on your meme tag
Tomorrow night, in New York, a real live social network experiment. After a discussion led by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, the real action: a cocktail party at which guests wear wireless badges called meme tags that track and analyze social interaction in real time. I'm guessing that, at the end, there's a map showing who talked to whom, and some kind of prize for the most connected individual. Malcolm Gladwell should be disqualified considering the number of starstruck webloggers who'll head up to shake the great man's hand.

Social Network Soiree [Eyebeam] #

Public mockery
Here's an excerpt from a leaked internal memo: one of the big public relations groups advising its staff how to handle weblogs. "Should PR pros pitch webloggers? From a PR perspective, blogs can be a two-edged sword. If the right blogger can be interested in your client's products or services, s/he can carry key messages to like-minded readers. And while it's often relatively easy to reach the top decision maker at a publication with a masthead of one, educating and convincing a blogger to write about a client can be time-consuming. What's more, where traditional editors would at worst ignore pitches they felt missed the mark, in the often curmudgeonly world of blogging, a miscalculated PR call might be deemed grounds for public mockery." #

Scott Ganz chooses his martial art
"In an effort to prevent myself from becoming a 200 pound helping of pudding, I'm going to enroll in Krav Maga, Israel's own self-defense system. I'd try the Palestinian self defense system, but then I'd need children I can rig to explode and a knack for lying on television."

Scott Ganz #

The Weblog Foundation
   One of those brilliantly obvious ideas, from Jeff Jarvis: a foundation for the weblog community. "The foundation would support weblogs with hosting, software, and honorariums for a wide array of selected webloggers. It would raise money from sponsor/underwriters, who would receive advertising on selected weblogs, as well as from technology underwriters, readers' contributions, and other activities."

   A few suggestions: the Foundation could support some of the weblog publishing systems. More hardware for Blogspot? A big blog party at a conference such as SXSW?

   As for donors: a foundation could also be a good vehicle for commercial weblog enterprises to return something to the community. For instance, a weblog content syndication service would need to pay royalties to authors, but reluctant to insult individual authors with an insultingly miniscule check. It might make more sense to offer instead to contribute the royalties to a foundation. Or give the foundation a portion of the equity.

   One potential problem: who is going to control the foundation? Equal numbers of warbloggers and web kids on the committee? Votes based on Blogdex rankings?

Jeff Jarvis #

The Shiite card
A clever idea: encouraging Shiite separatism in eastern Saudi Arabia. Everybody would love to let that unpleasant country go to hell, except for the oil. It's not that a hostile regime would restrict oil supplies; more that it would use the revenues to fund attacks on the West, without even pretending to funnel the money through Islamic charities. But Max Singer proposes an independent state sitting on the oil reserves. In which case we could just let the House of Osama and the House of Saud fight it out, preferably to the death. Here's Max Singer: "One essential measure will be to stop the flow of Wahhabi money from Saudi Arabia. The great vulnerability of the Saudi regime that could make it possible for the US to stop this flow is that the Wahhabis are only a small minority of the population of the EP of Saudi Arabia, from where all their money comes. It is well within the power of the US to make it possible for the EP to become independent from the Wahhabis, a new Moslem Republic of East Arabia."

Free the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia [Jerusalem Post] #

Chris Anderson on weblogs
Wired's editor on press tour, as the magazine redesigns: 'But [Chris] Anderson seemed most energized when talking about the possibilities of technology. He expressed fascination with the ''heat'' generated by ''blogging,'' the personalized Web diaries that have attracted wide readership and ''unleashed this storm of voices.'''

Getting re-'Wired' in a more user-friendly fashion [Boston Globe] #

Saturday, May 11

The perils of automated phone systems
I thought this only happened in jokes. I'm using services called Webley and Simulring to transfer my calls to wherever I am. In case you're wondering, Simulring is better and cheaper, but doesn't yet provide voicemail. I'm migrating away from Webley. Anyway, I'm not writing about that. Inadvertently, I have had my Simulring number redirecting to Webley, and vice versa. So callers have been hearing: "This is Webley. Please hold while I try to find him... Welcome to Simulring... This is Webley..."

· Simulring

· Webley #

Friday, May 10

Shock horror: an intellectual as president?
Laura Bush, on Vaclav Havel. "He was a playwright, he was an intellectual, he was not someone you would think of as becoming the president." Of course, if he'd been an actor or a failed oilman, that would have been an entirely different matter.

· First Lady Ready for European Trip [Yahoo via Christian] #

Libertarian bias
Put Google and bloggers together, and what do you get? Libertarian bias in search results. Here's Steven Johnson's logic. "Because the blogging community contains a disproportionate number of libertarians, it's possible that Google searches on certain hot-button issues will start skewing toward libertarian-friendly pages. Given Google's increasing prominence, this libertarian slant could prove to be more significant than the more familiar concerns about liberal bias in the major networks, and conservative bias on Fox News." #

Google v. the human race
Steven Johnson, founder of Feed and author of Emergence, makes a powerful point: weblogs are more about finding things than producing original content. "The true revolution promised by the rise of bloggerdom is not about journalism. It's about information management. The bloggers have the potential to do something far more original than offer up packaged opinions on the news of the day; they can actually help organize the Web in ways tailored to your minute-by-minute needs. Often dismissed as self-obsessed "vanity sites," the bloggers actually have an important collective role to play on the Web. But they're not challengers to the throne of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. They're challengers to the throne of Google."

· Use the blog, Luke [Steven Johnson, in Salon]

· Comment [Kottke] #

God, she's good
I always read Peggy Noonan. First of all, she's a bewitching writer. Surly bonds of earth: remember that, from when she was Reagan's speechwriter? Second, she's gentle and wise and, as such, a tonic after a diet of generally shrill conservative commentators. She can be generous to her political enemies: she loves Aaron Sorkin's West Wing, which is the last bastion of the Democratic party. And she can persuade. This an article about why Americans like Bush. It's basically the Sullivan thesis. Except that Andrew Sullivan is increasingly partisan, predictable, and annoying. Peggy Noonan had me thinking: yes, you know, Bush doesn't really need the job; he's not desperate to please, like Clinton; and isn't America such a wonderful country where a gentleman-farmer like Bush can rise to be president. The spoils of office are so great, but the system somehow weeds out the personally corrupt. And then I remembered: I don't rate Bush. Peggy Noonan: dangerous to liberal convictions.

The Crying Room: Why America likes President Bush [Peggy Noonan] #

Thursday, May 9

What's All the Talk About Blogging?
Oh dear, the marketers are coming... "If this practice is spreading like wildfire and traffic to blogs is surging, doesn't it seem like an obvious opportunity for online advertisers? For advertising opportunities, blogging technology needs to be user friendly. Ad technology needs to step up to the plate. To me, this parallels the crudeness of currently available ad opportunities in instant messaging."

What's All the Talk About Blogging? [ClickZ] #

Wednesday, May 8

And the dead are risen
This, from Mark Steyn's latest, is hilarious, if true. Is there any authoritative confirmation? You know, from, like, UN inspectors, or French peace activists. 'Anxious to lend the West's agitated humanitarians a helping hand, a group of Palestinians in Jenin held a funeral a week ago for one of their massacred compatriots and invited a cameraman along. The deceased, covered in a shroud, was being borne on a stretcher to his final resting place, when, alas, his bearers stumbled and he fell to the ground. The "corpse" picked himself up, dusted himself off and climbed back on the stretcher to start all over again.'

· Announcing the first British Press Award For Total Fantasy [National Post via InstaPundit
#

Springtime for Hitler
Sometimes I don't know why I bother. I should just cut and paste the best of the emails I get. When Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds praised the intelligence of their readers, I thought they were just sucking up. Now I'm not so sure. Here are some long and interesting comments by Leon Hader, from the Cato, on European anti-semitism and proposals for a separation of Israel and the Palestinian areas. 'While I share your skepticism over the It's-Springtime-For-Hitler-in-Europe thesis advanced by Will/Krauthammer and company (including by David Brooks in an earlier piece in the Weekly Standard), it's important to emphasize that one cannot discuss all the various anti-Jewish attitudes and traditions in the West and castigate them altogether as "anti-Semitism."'

· European anti-semitism [Letter]

· The Western Wall [Letter]

· Pakistan in America’s War against Terrorism: Strategic Ally or Unreliable Client? [Cato] #

Tuesday, May 7

United? The US is turning into a nation of city states
On the freeway into Manhattan from New York's JFK airport, against a billboard image of the billowing stars and stripes, emblazoned on the sides of the giant trucks that rumble from coast to coast, stuck on bumpers in the midwest, is the ubiquitous slogan of the US after September 11th: United We Stand.


That first time coming into New York after the destruction of the Twin Towers, the sentiment was moving; and the words remain a statement of American resolve; but, in a very important sense, the assertion of unity rings false.


However strong the common purpose in the current campaign against rogue Arab groups, the US is very gradually fragmenting. That statement may appear perverse, at a time when the US is at the peak of its power. Nevertheless, on a recent road-trip from San Francisco to New York, I was struck most by the observation: Americans are evolving apart from eachother.


I have led a sheltered existence in the United States. In five years of living and traveling in the United States, I have clung to the coasts. Sure, there was the conference in Austin, Texas, and another in Scottsdale, Arizona, but those two towns are enclaves of California, and do not count.


My only other experience of middle America - Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming and all the other flyover states - was from a safe distance of 35,000 feet. I would look down at the empty land, remember that, on 19th century maps of North America, the area was called the Great American Desert, and check how many hours more to San Francisco.


It was as if I was setting out across the desert when I left San Francisco. Acquaintances bombarded me with helpful advice, most of which involved plotting the shortest route across the cold and the barren. Paul Pedersen, a Silicon Valley software architect, advised me to avoid the states where schools taught creationism over evolution: Carolinas good, Virginia bad.


Go the southerly route, that was the consensus view. Santa Fe is great, and from there you just have to make it through northern Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, before you get to Tennessee and civilization. Well, if not civilization, at least Elvis.


And some people, like Raymond, the camp German owner of a boutique hotel just above the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, simply failed to understand what possessed me. "For me, the US is LA, New York, San Francisco, maybe New Orleans. The rest: you can keep it."


I already knew from the movies and the newspapers that middle America would be different, of course. The inhabitants: redneck cops, slow hillbillies, desperate smalltown intellectuals - cheap but funny stereotypes. The places: Waco, Laramie, or Columbine - the dateline from the latest massacre.


When I tried to delve beneath the cliche, I would read the occasional anthropological study in the New York Times on the strange culture of the heartland. An evergreen topic refreshed by the latest Christian rock phenomenon, or a novel such as Bridges of Madison County that emerged out of nowhere - middle America, that is - to dominate the bestseller list.


And from close up? The high production values of an anti-abortion ad on Christian radio; a fragment from the right-wing talk radio show, we're a fat and happy country being gutted by the wolves, the immigrants; Christian graffiti - "Trust Jesus" - in Virginia; having to order a "lady's steak" and splitting it between two of us, because neither of us were meat-eating middle American male.



The differences in America were displayed in a tidily shaded map during the November 2000 election: the Pacific and East Coast states a solid Gore blue, bracketing the Bush red of middle America. The more detailed county-by-county maps of election results showed the blue liberals like a fringe around the coasts, being pushed into a few urban enclaves and the sea by the real America. Of course George W. Bush was indifferent to global warming, when a rise in sea levels would largely inundate the America which voted for his opponents.



To be sure, the divide between liberal coasts and conservative heartland is more obvious now in part because other political issues have disappeared. There is broad consensus over economic and foreign policy; and the political legacy of the civil war, the strange alliance between Northern liberals and Southern segregationists, has expired. All that is left, as one character says on the West Wing television show: one corporate party, with a pro-abortion and anti-abortion wing.



And, it is more commonly the homogeneity of the US that strikes a visitor. Driving along the US interstate highway system is like the movie Groundhog Day, in which the hero is condemned to repeat every day: a strip of Macdonalds, Home Depot, and Walmart, endlessly repeated. The few pathetic retail variations I noticed: In 'N' Out burgers in California and Arizona, the Waffle House in Arkansas, and one genuine diner we stumbled upon at an exit in mid-Tennessee.



As the South develops, and Northerners move in, cities such as Atlanta are becoming more liberal. The last census showed Latinos and other minorities making their way into previously white areas. Intermarriage, at least between Asians and whites, or between Jews and non-Jews, runs as high as 50%.



But the divide is no longer so much ethnic as cultural. Americans are evolving apart. The US has always catered to cultural defectors from the mainstream. The rich in their gated communities, some so exclusive that they are located in other gated communities; pensioners in southern Florida condos; gays in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood; north European protestant sects in rural Pennsylvania.

The difference now is that entire regions, not just enclaves, are going their own way. Cities, even the largest, have specialized. Entertainment in Los Angeles, technology in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, publishing and finance in New York; and each of these industries attracts a certain type of person. With people so easily able to rent a U-Haul truck, a new apartment, and trek across the country, it does not take long for like spirits to collect in these city-states.



I am moving from San Francisco to New York in part because I want to be witty without being thought rude. Even the goys in New York behave Jewish; West Coast Jews, as one LA screenwriter observes, have become blond and bland within two generations, as if sand got into their DNA. Inhabitants of Silicon Valley are smart, earnest and awkward. Los Angelinos do indeed take more care over their appearance, and they are more attractive. Southerners are loud and friendly. And, yes, middle Americans are fatter; the sterotype, like most others, is true.

· United? The US is turning into a nation of city states [short version, with awkward edits, in Management Today]
#

Only in New York
Or, rather, only at the Conde Nast cafeteria. The decor, curves designed by Frank Gehry, is striking, of course. But the conceit - an upmarket staff canteen - sometimes verges on the risible. For instance, when I'm waiting with my delightfully oval tray for FIVE minutes while the duck breast is delicately arranged on a plate. Then again, every other customer is a mag hag food stylist.

· Photo #

Monday, May 6

I'm looking for an apartment
I'm in the market for an apartment in New York. Posting here is a measure of my frustration with New York real estate agents. Ideally, I'd rent privately, and split the fee that would have otherwise gone to the agent. If you know anyone who is looking to rent out a brownstone or loft apartment, do put them in touch with me. Click
here for a more detailed description of my dream apartment. #

ia/ news for information architects
A weblog for information architects, with a cool feature. At the base of each post is a collection of links, which automatically pull up related items from Google, Google news and Teoma.

· iaslash.org #

Sunday, May 5

Why no Le Pen in the Anglosphere
"Why is Britain such an exception? Two reasons stand out. One is the lack of a nationalist tradition of the Continental type, in which adulation of the nation-state becomes a pseudo-religion justifying the submersion of the individual in a greater cause.... The existence of Euroskeptics, particularly in the Conservative Party, now controlled by that school of thought, but also as a non-trivial minority current in Labor, offer a liberal, tolerant, and reasoned outlet for the strong suspicions of, and frustrations against Brussels that exist among ordinary Britons." Oh, come on. That's a ridiculously self-satisfied Anglospheric analysis. Much as I'd like to believe in the unique qualities of the Anglo-American tradition, there's one obvious reason for the absence of far-right parties in the UK: the electoral system. A first-past-the-post system, which applies in the US and the UK, punishes smaller poltical groupings. So far-right voters are forced to subsume themselves within the main conservative party. If the UK and the US had proportional representation or two-round presidential systems, they would have their Le Pens.

· Anglosphere: Non-barking English dogs [United Press International] #

New York Times on blogs
"Needless to say, blogs are addictive. They are not, however, the most economical use of your time. To read blogs requires a willingness to wander from link to link in the hope that some mind-numbingly detailed dispute over, say, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality or an Oscar nomination will resolve itself into a usable insight."

At Large in the Blogosphere [New York Times] #

A Texan, a Frenchman, and an Israeli
A Texan, a Frenchman, and an Israeli are traveling on a ship when they are hit by a storm, the ship is destroyed and they are washed ashore on an island inhabited by cannibals. The tribes-leader says "Before we throw you in a boiling pot, you each have one wish." The Texan asks for a nice juicy steak, the Frenchman asks for a bottle of great wine - they both get what they asked, enjoy it, and are thrown in the boiling pot. The Israeli says "I'd like a kick in the ass, please." The cannibals are dumbfounded and the leader says "You know, you have one last wish." The Israeli repeats his request, turns around, and bends down, so the leader kicks him. The Israeli turns around, whips out a machine gun and shoots everyone. The other two shout from the pot "If you had the gun all along, why didn't you shoot them before?" "Well, the UN wouldn't have approved..." #

Laptops for outdoor cafes
No, it doesn't have a built-in Wi-Fi receiver. But the DayLite has a reflective screen which is readable outdoors in daytime. That's important; the idea of sitting outdoors, connected to the web, is alluring; but most laptop screens are near unreadable in daylight. ZDNet reckons battery life with the DayLite is six hours with the backlight enabled, so it should last even longer outdoors.

NEC Versa DayLite [ZDNet] #

Spidering
"Why is ("Spider-Man") sold out in advance, and why is there so much hoopla around going to the film tonight? Because of the Internet." [Stacey Herron, entertainment and media analyst at Jupiter Research]

"Spider-Man" uses Web to lure fans [CNET] #

Dante's hotspot
There's only one problem with the wireless network which Starbucks is building. It's Starbucks. The wireless internet connections are fine, but Starbucks staff still insist training customers to ask, not for a double espresso, but for a "doppio". My alternative: Caffe Dante in Greenwich Village. Excellent espresso, good sandwiches, tables on the pavement, conversations about politics all around, a few dodgy looking Russians - and a free wireless internet connection from an apartment above. I know this, because I'm here right now, and connected. One glitch: the owner has banned laptops. So you'll have to rely on the tolerance of the waitress, who is inclined to ignore the rule when the boss isn't around.

· Caffe Dante #

Gold diggers
Overheard, a cellphone monologue, in downtown Manhattan: "I know he throws good parties, but I don't like the scene. The girls are really gold-diggery. Not that I mind. But I need to find my level first. I need to be somebody. Or if I could turn up with four girls. But, not now, not like this." #

Automatic reciprocation
Link to this article from your weblog and it will automatically link back to you.
The Connoisseur [Disenchanted] #

Saturday, May 4

Why the Saudis will stay
Damn. I quite liked my armchair general fantasies about the division of Iraq, the Hashemite return to Mecca, and my personal favorite: giving Iran free rein in Shiite oil-producing eastern Saudi Arabia. (Not as mad as it sounds.) And now here's HD Miller, of Travelling Shoes, explaining why nothing much will change and I, reluctantly, believe him.

Travelling Shoes #

Candy and globalization
There's one thing that saves me from gorging when I go to the movies and see an array of chocolate and other sweet things before me. It's all American and therefore, by definition, disgusting. M&Ms. Ugh! Extrapolating wildly from personal experience: while tastes change, people like the candy they grew up with. Or the sweets, as we would say in the UK. So evil global corporations and fast food sweep may sweep all before them, but smarties will remain. Smarties? They're like M&Ms, except better. #

Jewish circles
For all you seekers after European anti-semitism, here's some actual evidence. In Hungary -- a small country in eastern Europe which has produced a disproportionate number of warbloggers -- there is a fat old writer called Istvan Csurka who leads an ultra-nationalist party. Everyone has always assumed that Csurka is an anti-semite, but he's typically used the code language: attacking cosmpolitans and international capital, rather than Jews, with a nudge and a wink. The story? Well, he's finally outed himself as an anti-semite. After a setback in the recent Hungarian elections, he's accused Jews straight out of fixing the result. 'Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP) leader István Csurka pressed for recounts over what he called widespread fraud, citing, "the Socialist and Free Democrat leadership, a section of the banking elite and, I say openly, Jewish circles" as the perpetrators.' Go, Krauthammer, kill, kill.

Budapest Sun #

Blog cannibal
Saw an old friend - and new blogger - Henry Copeland, yesterday. He was visiting from France. We used to tell eachother new things. This time, he'd read everything I had to say, and vice versa. As Henry said, in his one original observation: "Blogs have cannibalized conversation." A quotable line that he of course knew would be quickly blogged. #

B-armey
US politician calls for Israel to expel Palestinians from the West Bank. Except it isn't just anybody: it's Dick Armey, House majority leader. "There are many Arab nations that have many hundreds of thousands of acres of land and soil and property and opportunity to create a Palestinian state. I happen to believe the Palestinians should leave."

Senior Republican calls on Israel to expel West Bank Arabs [Guardian] #

French vox pops
France's politicians and journalists: so connected with the people that they get the security services to do the vox pops. "The media - themselves reeling from the backlash against the inaccurate forecasts that they carried - have taken to quoting the Renseignements-Generaux, the equivalent of MI5, as a principal source for movements in opinion - though its data is based on conversations overheard in pubs and on the street. "
Wary pollsters refuse to make predictions [Guardian] #

Australian imperialism
Tim Blair is just funny. "Soon the U.S. will become a mere seventh Australian state, allowing its citizens to vote in important Australian elections and participate in Australia's gigantic economy."

The Australian invasion [FOXNews.com] #

Friday, May 3

Liberte, Egalite, Judeophobie
A monumental piece on French anti-semitism, in the Weekly Standard, which makes the point that most of the hysterics - Will, Krauthammer - conveniently ignore: anti-Semitism in France is a largely Arab phenomenon. The French left, like a pathetic academic trying to keep in with the kids, has endless sympathy for disaffected ethnic minorities. And, when disaffection turns to crime, the French authorities have been characteristically craven; France's governments have always been impotent in face of the mob, rather than government. A message to US neocons: by all means give the French a hard time for that. But do remember that France - and French Jews - are confronting the same Arab rage that drove two planes into the Twin Towers. And, in France, the Arab rage isn't flown in; it comes in every day on the subway.

· Liberte, Egalite, Judeophobie [Weekly Standard] #

The truth(s) of Jenin
If, like me, you're genuinely confused about Jenin, and unsure how to allocate blame, you'll find salvation in William Saletan's latest Frame Game column. Slate does this kind of meta really well. "Israel's critics want the investigation to focus on what Israeli soldiers did to Jenin; Israel wants to include what Jenin's terrorists did to Israel. Critics want to begin with the assault; Israel wants to begin with events that provoked it. In evaluating the Israeli military's behavior, critics want to treat the camp's residents as civilians; Israel wants to treat them as abettors of terrorism. Critics want to ask whether Israeli soldiers distinguished civilians from fighters; Israel wants to ask how the fighters got mixed in with the civilians. Critics say a massacre should be defined by how many civilians were killed; Israel says it should be defined by whether the killing was deliberate."

· Just the Facts, Imam - The search for answers in Jenin becomes a fight over questions [William Saletan, in Slate] #

Thursday, May 2

Liberal dinner party
Aaron Sorkin, creator of the West Wing, is my newest liberal hero. He's got the conscience without the self-satisfied moral posture. A rare combination. But, finding political inspiration in the scripts of a Hollywood cokehead: that just shows how desperate I am. The fact is that the average liberal is a bore. I'd rather have an argumentative neocon round for dinner any day. And they write better too. So, here's a challenge. The fantasy guest list for the liberal dinner party. Here's a start. Any other suggestions?

· Christopher Hitchens · for loving a good fight

· James Carville · for being a liberal bully

· CJ Gregg · aka Aaron Sorkin

· Toby Ziegler · aka Aaron Sorkin

· Jonathan Friedland · loving the US for the right reasons

· Joshka Fischer · for morality in foreign policy

· Michael Walzer · for searching out the decent left

· John Lloyd · former Marxist, my mentor on the Financial Times

· Joan Allen · from The Contender

· Emma Bonino · yes, a European commissioner #

Outraged? I'm barely surprised
Damn, I missed the West Wing last night. But, never fear, weblogs are here. Yourish.com has transcribed a wonderfully scathing CJ Gregg speech. CJ, the press spokesperson, is asked whether she is outraged by Saudi Arabian schoolgirls left to burn by rescuers because they weren't dressed decently. The answer, classic CJ: "Outraged? I'm barely surprised. This is a country where women aren't allowed to drive a car. They're not allowed to be in the company of any man other than a close relative. They're required to adhere to a dress code that would make a Maryknoll nun look like Malibu Barbie. They beheaded 121 people last year for robbery, rape, and drug trafficking. They have no free press, no elected government, no political parties, and the royal family allows the religious police to travel in groups of six, carrying nightsticks, and they freely and publicly beat women. But Brutus is an honorable man. Seventeen schoolgirls were forced to burn alive because they weren't wearing the proper clothing. Am I outraged? No, Steve, no Chris, no Mark. That is Saudi Arabia, our partners in peace."

· West Wing via Yourish.com #

Mini-size me
The Economist has its Big Mac index of purchasing power; I, food snob that I am, have a sushi index. And New York, by that measure, is off the scale. In most cities, sushi is sold in pairs. I was surprised by the fact that a maguro sushi seemed no more expensive in New York than in San Francisco. Until I realized that, in Manhattan, it's not just the apartments that are tiny: the sushi comes in singles. In New York, people turn to their waiter and say, in a tone of MacDonalds enthusiasm: hey, would you mini-size that for me? #

The all-seeing Eye

"Astrogrid is a £5m project that attempts to put a single, friendly interface on the huge number of astronomical archives and data sets currently held online." On one level this is just a common markup language for astronomical data. On another, an essential step in networking all the world's telescopes to create one all-seeying Eye.

· Grid helps science go sky-high [BBC] #

Wednesday, May 1

Coast vs Coast
An excellent essay by Dave Winer on West Coast media. "Some people out here on the west coast (not me!) thought we should expand from being the heart of technology into publishing. Our answer to the NY Times, Washington Post and Time/Newsweek would be the Industry Standard, Salon, Slate and Wired. Heh. Fat chance. The Standard is gone and the rest are hanging by a thread, and these days, no one outside a loony bin [3] is predicting that the New Economy will wipe out all that came before it. All those pubs did was try to clone the print model on the Web, and if you want be a revolution, you have to be more clever than that. (Clue: Let your readers write for you.)"

· Coast vs Coast [DaveNet] #

How to lose friends and alienate people
Jonah Goldberg, in the National Review, has another go at the Europeans. I'm not going to argue with his individual points, except to say that he's hugely selective of his facts, to the point of distortion. But I do wonder where all this is going. The conservative press and weblogs have beaten up on France, Norway, Germany, Belgium, France, and more France. Get it around your head: Europe is the only place on earth that even comes close to sharing Western values. I *don't* think that foreign policy is a popularity contest. But, at the rate the American conservatives are casting off allies, they'll be left with Israel and Taiwan.

Jonah Goldberg #

Manhattan Unfurled
For Christmas, I would like a copy of Manhattan Unfurled, a book which unfurls into a 22-foot-long panorama of the city, the East on one side, the West on the other. Anyone have any idea how one could hang that?

Amazon.com: Manhattan Unfurled #

The complete guide to weblogs
A blog and directory about blogs, blog tools, blog search, blog advertising.

guideblog #

Europe and America: the racism contest
Peter Pribik has some generally sensible points. He points out that black-white intermarriage in the US is increasing. But the rate is still below that of almost every European country. Peter's quote-suppliers blame American blacks themselves. They have cast themselves as victims, and chosen to separate from mainstream society, which may indeed be true. To which I'd ask the question, in a tone of mock innocence: why are American blacks so different? It's late, so the discussion is going to have to continue some other day. #

New York media party
   The first media party since I arrived in New York, the Slate event at which Jacob Weisberg was unveiled as the online magazine's new editor. I have to gush.

   Sure, the crowd were bitchy. A New York Sun reporter was overheard dishing the dirt on the embryonic newspaper to Kurt Andersen, formerly of Inside, who will of course keep the information entirely to himself. And it was all inside baseball. What did Ned Desmond's new title at Business 2.0 really mean? As if anyone really cares. Everybody hates Wired's Chris Anderson except for James Truman and Si Newhouse. Not true, actually. Most people who know Anderson think he's a smart and charming guy.

   But, dammit, New York media people are witty, and that isn't a word I've used in a while. Even the speeches - by Weisberg and Michael Kinsley, his predecessor - were entertaining. Kinsley, who said the change in editors was what Microsoft called a reorg, told a couple of good Redmond jokes. My walker for the evening, recently transplanted from San Francisco, said she was exhausted. Too many smart people, and the obligation to make intelligent conversation.

· Slate's new editor based in New York [Seattle Times] #

I am a cultural imperialist
   A friend was in town from the UK this weekend, and rehearsed the old arguments that I thought we'd left behind at university, where he learned that there were as many interpretations of novels as there were readers, and who was to say that one was better than another. And, as we talked about the clash with Islam, the old questions came out again. Who are we to say that our way is better? It's their truth; who are we to judge?

   I can't believe I ever tolerated that exercise in intellectual self-destruction. I certainly don't now. I say our way *is* better. I have every right to judge. Many truths? Well, this is mine: the West represents the pinnacle of human achievement. Modern Islamic "culture" - unless it reforms - will be listed by the history books alongside German fascism and Soviet communism as a reactionary spasm. Someone else can judge the quality of a society by the virginity of women on marriage. My criteria? Progress: space travel, electronics, computer networks, gene therapy, long life, literature, movies, music.

   So I hope I'm doing my bit for the Wall Street Journal's new campaign. I usually hate the op-ed pages of the Journal, and they were predictably rabid in today's launch of the Western Front column. But I like the idea of Western pride, and this para: "Now it's time for Western culture to stand up again. Worries about imperialism, especially cultural imperialism, should be cast off. Global free trade isn't imperialistic; it's the spread of a natural right, economic freedom. Demanding that a country respect its people's basic rights isn't imperialistic, and neither is standing for an unfettered media."

   One quibble. Why defend against accusations of imperialism? Of course we want the Western system to encompass the entire planet. I'm all for being subtle: detente with the Soviet Union, Hollywood movies to South America, trade with China, professed respect for Islam. But let's be frank. The objective is global domination. Of course we are cultural imperialists.

· The Western Front [Wall Street Journal]

· Jeff Jarvis #

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