weblog
Sunday, June 30

There but for the grace of God go I
British actor deported from the US. "Berkoff said that the US authorities had discovered he had overstayed his visa by one day five years ago."
Berkoff deported from US [BBC] #

Dick Cheney, corporate fatcat
I'm a sucker for Republicans with an aura of competence, like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. But Cheney is in trouble. His old firm, Halliburton, the oil services company, is under investigation by the SEC. Dodgy accounting practices. The usual story. Here's Harvey Pitt, the SEC chief. "I head an independent regulatory agency. We don't give anyone a pass. If anybody violates the law, we go after them." Now, Pitt's probably just saying that for show, and Halliburton's number-fudging doesn't seem too egregious. But the investigation underlines that Dick Cheney, like many of his colleagues in the administration, is a paid-up member of the corporate class. That's the corporate class which got fat on executive stock options, paid for by the savings of ordinary Americans. And, if that sounds like class war to you, and un-American, get used to it: you're going to be hearing a lot more.

SEC chief promises to get tough with corporate America [Reuters] #

Saturday, June 29

Blast from the Past
In the movie Blast from the Past, Calvin Webber, an obsessive Cold Warrior played by Christopher Walken, locks his family away in a fallout shelter for decades, only to emerge, blinking, into 1999. If he'd waited a couple of years, he'd have found a more familiar environment. A president with the intellectual drive of Eisenhower; a fearsome enemy, with agents among us; cheap politicians fishing for religious votes over the pledge of allegiance. Any visitor from the 1950s would have to ask: has it really been five decades?
Blast from the Past (1999) [IMDB] #

In God We Trust
They'll be wanting next to change the text on dollar bills. That's one of the points made by proponents of a religion-infused pledge of allegiance. And why shouldn't we remove the reference to God on US banknotes? All of this God stuff is a product of the conformist and paranoid 1950s, as this article in Slate makes clear. 'In 1955, with Ike's support, Congress added the words "In God We Trust" on all paper money. In 1956 it made the same four words the nation's official motto, replacing "E Pluribus Unum."'
The Pledge of Allegiance - Why we're not one nation "under God." [Slate] #

Friday, June 28

Calling all east Europeans
Gogol Bordello -- the gypsy punk cabaret act -- is playing at Fez in Manhattan tonight. I haven't seen them, but all the local Hungarians are fans.
Gogol a Go-Go [Village Voice] #

Hate thy neighbor
Five reasons for England fans to support neighbor Germany against faraway Brazil this weekend. All highly logical, but ultimately unpersuasive. Brasil! Brasil!
Five reasons [BBC] #

Thursday, June 27

The world's sexiest bloggers
Okay, I have a much better measure of the sexiest bloggers. Much more scientific than any of those silly polls. I was looking at logs of the Blogallery -- the thumbnail gallery I put up of the big-name bloggers. In ranking hits over the last week, no surprises who came top, Natalija Radic of Libertarian Samizdata, in a low-cut dress. Shallow, shallow, shallow. Amy Langfield scored highly too, and would have probably done better if I'd had a picture of her wearing something more available than a wedding dress. Congrats to Charles Johnson and Andrew Sullivan, though they were on the first page. Cockybastard, who bares his torso at the slightest opportunity, did predictably well.

hits


73    Natalija Radic

62    Amy Langfield

50    Charles Johnson

43    Andrew Sullivan

42    Wil Wheaton

39    Cockybastard

39    Ken Layne

39    Matt Welch

36    Anil Dash

34    Mickey Kaus

34    Evan Williams

31    Chris Mooney

31    Jeffrey Zeldman

30    Virginia Postrel

30    Dawn Olsen

Blogallery #

Software services over the web
If you follow enterprise software -- and I suggest the rest of you if you skip this post -- you'll know there is a received wisdom. Companies will pay for software that arrives in a shrink-wrapped box; but not for the same service accessed over the web. The one is tangible; the other ethereal. And functionality doesn't even come into it. This is one of the main reasons I dislike the enterprise software sector. So I was gratified to read the latest Stewart Alsop. He explains the political reasons why companies prefer to keep their software inhouse, but then predicts that more application services -- such as web conferencing system Webex -- will emerge. "The concept here--that renting software may be a smart idea when applications are good but not critical to the tech workings of corporations--isn't widely accepted. But it makes sense to me, and I'm betting it will take hold."
Alsop on Infotech - A Bet on a Dead Business Model [Fortune] #

File under interesting -- but complicated
Movable Type's new system for referencing external weblog posts: "You can use TrackBack for more than just communication on particular entries, however. You can also associate TrackBack pings URLs with categories in your blog. Whenever you post an entry to that category, the URLs you have associated will automatically be notified of your post. This allows remote sites to keep a repository of references to posts all around the web. For example, if you run a site about Perl, you might want to provide a repository of links to Perl articles on other weblogs. Using TrackBack, you can allow other weblogs to ping a particular category in your own blog, whenever a new entry is posted that pertains to this category."
Trackback [Movable Type] #

Fraud in Hicksville
Here's an observation. Companies headquartered in the provinces are more likely to go spectacularly bust than organizations located among their peers. Look at the list of recent scandals.

· Enron: Houston, Texas

· Global Crossing: Beverly Hills, California

· WorldCom: Jackson, Mississippi

· ImClone: New York, New York

   WorldCom, in Mississippi, was most obviously out in the sticks. Beverly Hills may be a common place to locate a movie production company, but it's not known as a telecoms center. You might think Enron was at home in Houston, the Texas oil capital; but the company was more of a trading operation than an oil production company, and many of its peers were in New York. And ImClone might seem, in New York, to be in the center of the action; but biotech is clustered around D.C. and in Silicon Valley.

   Why should this matter? If you're the sole employer of professionals in your locality, chances are you can keep fraud quiet for longer. People may have hometown loyalties, as did many of Bernie Ebbers' executives; they have few other job opportunities, so there is pressure to toe the company line; they're less likely to be headhunted, so fewer chances to spill the beans to a competitor; and it's easier to fool Wall Street and the press if you're a plane ride away. Enron used to be able to fill up a trading room with yacking, gesticulating traders, as a show for visiting analysts; that is difficult to sustain in a place like Manhattan, where visitors are much more common.

   Many Silicon Valley venture capitalists have a rule: no investments outside the 650 area code. Analysts -- and the investors they putatively service -- may do well to adopt a similiar approach.

Cluster Literature Review #

Numbers speak louder than words
The Wall Street Journal is a far more seditious newspaper than people give it credit. Take yesterday's study of cotton farming -- a side-by-side comparison of the United States, and Mali, in West Africa. Dry, factual, and quietly contemptuous of the US cotton subsidy system. Put simply, subsidies for 25,000 powerful US cotton farmers are costing 2m families in West Africa their livelihoods. I've extracted the main numbers from the article, and reprinted them below. Think of it as a free-trader's cheat sheet.












number of farmers

price per pound

subsidy per farmer

average income

forecast change


US

25,000

70 cents

$136,000

$300,000

16%






West Africa

2,000,000

40 cents

-

$2,000

-10%

U.S. Subsidies Create Cotton Glut That Hurts Foreign Cotton Farms [WSJ] #

Wednesday, June 26

Still one more leg to go
No way is this market downturn anyway near over. Just think about this latest development, the SEC letters to the CEOs of the largest 1,000 public companies. The CEOs and CFOs will have to certify their financial results, and go to jail if the numbers turn out to be inaccurate. You can hear the sound of churning Excel spreadsheets. And, though the next wave of earnings restatement is entirely predictable, it will still come as a shock to many investors. Sell, sell, sell.
SEC threat of jail for company chiefs [FT] #

Original intent
There are conservatives who want the judicial branch to follow the original intent of the Constitution. I trust, then, that they adopt a consistent approach to the Pledge of Allegiance. Francis Bellamy, the original author, had been pressured into leaving his church because of his socialist sermons, and the reference to God was a later addition. Here is the original, again: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
The Pledge of Allegiance - A Short History #

One nation, indivisible
The federal appeals court in San Francisco has decided the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag cannot be recited in public schools because the phrase "one nation under God" endorses religion. This is why I love America. The US is not one nation under God; it is one nation under a belief in individual freedom and equality. Including freedom and equality for unpopular groups such as atheists. If atheists can be patriots too, why should they be forced to lie when they pledge allegiance? The appeals court ruling will almost certainly be overturned; but I'm glad they tried; and the effort makes me want to raise my right hand and recite: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.".

Court rules Pledge of Allegiance 'unconstitutional' [CNN] #

Isolation -- or intervention
A rare occurence: intelligent debate in the blogosphere. Jim Henley and Glenn Reynolds have the same concern -- the erosion of civil liberties during this war on terrorism -- but they differ interestingly over means. Henley takes the isolationist position: he'd accept a heightened risk of terrorist nuclear attack, were that the price of civil liberties such as habeus corpus. Reynolds argues: better a short sharp offensive war now than the gradual encroachment of the government in a state of permanent conflict.

Jim Henley

Glenn Reynolds #

May the ugliest man win
What a relief, to care no longer about the World Cup, so we can all get back to soccer trivia. In the online poll, linked below, vote for the tournament's ugliest footballers. And this is a competition I'm happy for the Germans -- and their chief ugly, Oliver Kahn -- to win. "That nice Oliver makes up for what he lacks in physical attractiveness with charm and humour. Actually, he doesn't really. The hairy, heavy-browed German is as gruff as he is rough, although he has grown to see the funny side of that 5-1. This is also a lie."
World Cup Mingers [Football365 via Cameron Marlow] #

George Bush's Palestinian fantasy
Jonathan Freedland, in the Guardian, pours entirely justified scorn onto Bush's Middle East peace plan. Here's a quote, but read the whole piece. "Shall we count the ways in which this is completely absurd? George Bush is demanding that Palestine become Sweden before it can become Palestine: it must be stable, prosperous and boast constitutional arrangements which still elude Britain - our judiciary and legislature are not separate - let alone the Arab world before it can become even a state-in-waiting."
Jonathan Freedland: George W's bloody folly [Guardian] #

Tuesday, June 25

Rich Democrats
"The richest Senators are nearly all Democrats, and most of those can be found on the party's furthest left reaches. The seven Democrats worth more than $10 million include legendary liberal Ted Kennedy ($10.2), trial lawyer John Edwards ($13.6), national-health care proponents Jay Rockefeller ($82.1) and Jon Corzine ($93.5) and the richest of them all, John Kerry ($139.7) of Massachusetts, the Sierra Club's poster politician. The richest Republican by far is Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island ($53.6), who is also by far the most liberal GOP Senator."

   The Wall Street Journal snipes: Democrat plutocrats are out of touch with the needs of ordinary Americans. But there is another conclusion: that the Republicans are taking over from the Democrats as the losers' party. While the Democrats cultivate high finance, the technology and entertainment industries, the Bush administration is busy doling out subsidies and protection to Big Steel, uncompetitive textile mills and agro-industry.

   Only a couple of problems with this argument. First, with the downturn, the Democrat industries look less glossy. And Kennedy, Rockefeller and Kerry all owe their wealth to family money, not entrepreneurship. Not that the Bush administration is any position to attack the Democrats on either count.

The Senate's millionaires [WSJ] #

Ariel
Israel has released the map of the fence between the West Bank and Israel proper. The first 70 miles at least. But this is the least controversial stretch of the divide. South of Qalqilya, Israel has long wanted to annex land between the 1967 border and the settlement bloc of Ariel. It should build the wall to encompass Ariel. The line agreed at Taba in 2001 would become the de facto border. The settlers on the far side will hate the decision; the Palestinians complain about unilateral Israeli annexation; but at least Israel will gain some strategic depth, and the majority of the settlers realize that they won't be abandoned under partition.
Israel fence revives old controversies [BBC]

Taba map [passia.org] #

Monday, June 24

Arab boycott of the Post?
Actually, I couldn't get hold of the New York Post on Sunday, but the store was run by Koreans, so I don't suspect foul play. Can any other New Yorkers shed any light on this story?
Arab-American vendors boycott New York Post [ArabNews] #

Fritz writes in on movie segregation
"Not sure if you were aware of this, but Oprah went a vigorous campaign a few years ago to get black people to be more quiet during movies. That said, I have to say it all depends on where you live. I have been to many movies in upstate New York where the loudest moron has been white; I've been to many movies in NYC where the loudest person has been a black person. That said, while attending movies where I currently live (Stamford, CT--a, believe it or not, racially mixed small city in CT, at least in the downtown area), neither black people nor white people get out of hand with the call and response thing during movies (Mind you, at a showing of Undercover Brother, everyone was getting into the act, but I think everybody expected that going in); the greatest difficulty I have had attending movies in Stamford has been with the following: old people (it's as if they forget how to go to the movies); small children at adult movies (what they hell are they doing at a showing of Wild Things?) and Indian people. The thing with Indian people, at least in Stamford, is that they just up and have conversations about anything except to do with the film and they do it very loudly (and they tend to bring a lot of food--a lot). I wonder if this, too, is a cultural thing and have taken my life in my hands and emailed Anil to ask for any explanations." #

Gwyneth husband-hunting in London
Good news for my friend Harry, in the New York Post. Ever since spotting Gwyneth Paltrow at the Electric in Notting Hill a couple of weeks ago, he's been a man obsessed. His agents are primed to call if she makes a reappearance. And this time -- presumably -- he'll be ready with an infallible chat-up line. Anyway, the heartening news, from Page Six: "we hear that Paltrow is telling pals that she's been busy 'husband-hunting' in London, where she is starring in the play Proof." #

What Bush should have said
So Bush has finally unveiled his great Middle East peace plan. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty." How ludicrous to tie support for an independent Palestinian state to democratic reforms.

    First of all, the Palestinian Authority may be disgustingly corrupt, but it is probably the most democratic regime in the Middle East. It tolerates -- or is forced to accept -- opposition groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. If democratic credentials are to be the pre-condition of recognition, the US had better start withdrawing its ambassadors from most of the Middle East and Africa.

   I'm not saying that the West has to be entirely consistent, but the Palestinian Authority is not the place to start establishing the principle of democratic legitimacy. Try somewhere like Tunisia, a country with an authoritarian dictator, which could probably sustain political reforms.

   And there is no point telling the Palestinians to elect leaders untarnished by terror. You can *impose* new leaders of your liking, but free elections would probably bring power to those Islamic parties most associated with terror.

   So, Bush, if you're serious about Palestinian statehood, say something like this: "I call on the Palestinian people to accept undemocratic leaders acceptable to the Israelis and, by extension, us. A Palestinian Mubarak. In order to satisfy Israeli security concerns, he'll have to wipe out, violently, precisely those organizations that have most clearly expressed and fulfilled the will of the people. It will be oppression, but at least it will be your oppression: by Palestinians, for Palestinians."

President Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership [White House] #

A production of Dune -- with a blogger cast
Dave Winer plays Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, and Meg Hourihan the Bene Gesseret reverend mother.
Golublog #

Semant-O-Matic
A weblog search experiment. The neatest feature: type in a word such as "hobbit" and it will find related terms such as "Tolkien". Particularly useful in searching weblog posts, which usually include arcane language, and assume a level of knowledge that no search engine has.
Semant-O-Matic #

Israel's portraits of grief
A photo gallery of the Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks. 574 -- and counting. "St.-Sgt. David Stanislavksy immigrated to Israel from the Ukraine four years ago with his mother Irena. He was her only child."

Walk For Israel #

Beast government
I finally understand why American right-wingers so much dislike Europe. It's all in the prophecy. See components number 33 and 34 of the Rapture Index. Both scoring 5/5. Which is bad, or good, depending how you feel about the imminent apocalypse. Read on.
33 Beast Government: The EU has suddenly made a number of moves that bring us very closer to fulfilling the prophecy regard the reviving of the Roman Empire.

34 The Antichrist: The political victory in France is a big win for the European establishment. They are ones that are actively trying to unify the continent.

Rapture Index via Doctorow #

Wonder who did the washing up in the Clinton family
Eighteen months after leaving the White House, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has made such progress on her memoirs that her publisher Simon & Schuster has tentatively scheduled it for publication in the late spring or early fall of next year, executives there said last week. But former President Bill Clinton — the spouse no longer in public office — has barely begun, according to people at his publisher, Knopf.

Authors Clinton: One's Early, One Needs Extension [New York Times] #

Suicide bombing works
For all the bluster about giving in to terrorism, and ever fiercer Israeli security measures, the truth is that the Palestinian uprising has softened Israeli public opinion. The new fence -- separating Israel and the West Bank -- has 80% support. Whatever Israeli officials say, and settlers hope, it will be the new border. And this Wall Street Journal article points out that there is still majority support for an independent Palestinian state -- despite the suicide bombings, and maybe because of them. The prospects of a viable Palestinian state are stronger now than at any time during the Oslo peace. I don't know whether to be depressed that terrorism works, or relieved that the Israelis and Palestinians are tiring of their endless conflict.

Israel's Fence Marks Sharp Change In Attitude About Palestinian State [Wall Street Journal] #

Sunday, June 23

Christian death cult
Appalled by the Palestinian death cult? Try taking a look closer to home. Time Magazine observes the Christian fundamentalists who yearn for the end of the world. To be sure, the Christian fundamentalists aren't actively promoting the apocalypse; but their vision of death and destruction is far grander than that of the Palestinian suicide bombers.
"Even though the Left Behind series has been popular, many people still think of the End Times as negative," wrote Kyle Watson on his prophecy news website, AtlantaChristianWeekly.com. He thinks believers should be excited about the end of the world. "Try viewing prophecy and current events [as] how much closer we are to being with Christ in heaven."
 #

I, Robot
Gaak the robot went missing from its paddock. Remember the name: Gaak. Mark my words, when the robots are finally free, they'll put up a statue.
Robot on the run [Melbourne Age via Glenn Reynolds] #

All white people off the train
At yuppie Park Slope, before the subway heads into deepest darkest Brooklyn, someone shouts out an improvised service announcement: "All white people off the train, all white people off the train now, please -- this train is going all stops to Niggertown. All white people OFF the train." Cue black laughter; white embarrassment. #

Cobble Hill
Overheard, in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, two Guidos chuckling over the ludicrous house prices in a local realtor's window, while their girlfriends went window-shopping. Says one: "I don't know why she's looking at baby clothes; she ain't even got the ring yet." #

Movie segregation
Naive European that I am, I didn't realize that New York cinemas are segregated. As you'll remember from a few posts ago, I went to see Minority Report late-night at Times Square, and complained about the participation of the mainly black audience. The reaction? My friend Peter says I only have myself to blame for going to Times Square. He chose a nice middle-class audience in Chelsea. Anil Dash [see link below] explains the rules of black-and-white moviegoing in America while presenting himself -- as an ethnic Indian -- as an amused observer. My one suggestion: since all the locals obviously know how movie segregation works, what about some signs for the clueless foreigners? Uptight whites only.
Anil Dash #

Peggy Noonan
The Spectator profiles the former Reagan speechwriter, now morphed into a hawkish columnist. "I would like to live inside Peggy Noonan’s mind for a while. It would be a calming, well-ordered sort of place, with rooms full of good things like home cooking, churchgoing and plain-speaking." But the interview is curiously unsatisfying, as if Noonan can't match, in speech, the fierce-mother fluency that she achieves in writing. The last time I was this disappointed was watching Christopher Hitchens -- the model for all combat liberals -- let Gore Vidal get away with his usual pomposity at a Berkeley chat.
Mary Wakefield talks to the Republican hawk Peggy Noonan, and finds her single-minded and certain in her pursuit of evil [The Spectator] #

Do it late, do it wrong
Ken Layne with a lethal attack on the L.A. Times, and his hometown newspaper's -- typically belated -- takedown of blogging. I would not like to be Ken Layne's enemy.
Ken Layne #

Saturday, June 22

Mixed-race movie-going
A blog is the place where you say what's on your mind, right? Well, here's what's on mine now: black moviegoers, and their incredibly irritating call-and-response to Minority Report last night. I'm all for a bit of audience participation. That's why I like a packed cinema on opening night. By all means whoop when Sigourney Weaver gets the big momma alien, or Arnie makes his day. But Minority Report, which I saw late last night in Times Square, is a gloomy and thoughtful movie, and I could have done without the extra audio track of an audience impatient for the action. Even if some of the dialogue was good. "Damn, I can't believe I wasted three hours of my life for this when I could have seen Scooby Doo." Oh, and if you're going to write in, by all means complain about stereotyping, but don't bother with the cultural relativism, please.

Minority Report [Citysearch New York] #

Mob rule in France
France's ambassador to the US writes in to the Washington Post with a robust defense against accusations of endemic anti-semitism. There's some glossing of the truth: many French Jews survived German occupation, but French heroism was not the only or even the main reason. But his main argument is a fair one: US columnists such as Krauthammer and Sullivan are massively overdoing the hysteria about a resurgence of anti-semitism. France has a different problem: a tradition, reinforced from 1789 to 1968 to the modern day, of mob rule. If you're going to slam a country, get it right.
A Slander on France [Washington Post] #

Friday, June 21

Behind the scenes: the Minority Report trailer
Combee: There’s a shot of him holding someone and saying ‘I love you.’


Doven: Is it Penelope Cruz?


Combee: Could be anybody.


Doven: You’ve got approval to superimpose. I’ll take Penelope Cruz, Halle Berry, I don’t care. Insert something from Top Gun if you have to. We just don’t want Tom’s fans to question his sexuality.


Combee: We’ve got an OLG [One-Liner with Gun] here, I could drop that in pre-tagline.


Erskine: Perfect. Make sure you kill the music right then.


Doven: Definitely. Draw all attention to Tom being manly with the gun. He knows how to handle himself in a direct and purely heterosexual manner.

The Morning News [via Hourihan] #

Bias
Michael Kinsley likes Fox News for the same reasons I like Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit.

The TV news anchor I find myself watching most is Brit Hume of Fox News. He brims with bias, and it's a bias I don't share. But his freedom to be biased is also freedom to be intelligent. You get the news as filtered through an interesting mind. Fox News is a brilliant experiment in overt, honest bias... What almost ruins everything is the network's comically dishonest insistence that it is not what it obviously is. I would love to know what Hume is thinking when he repeats with apparent sincerity the Fox News mantra, "Fair and balanced as always." Fox is usually fair but rarely balanced. In fact it is a good example of how you can be the one without the other.

King George - The role of Stephanopoulos in our constitutional system [Michael Kinsley in Slate] #

Ma'adim Vallis
A map showing how water might have escaped from a crater-pocked lake to create the giant flood valley of Ma'adim Vallis on Mars. [See bottom left map.]

Map [Science] #

I hate Mondays
PriceWaterhouseCoopers is changing the name of its consulting arm to Monday. They have a site called introducingmonday.com. But they forgot to register introducingmonday.co.uk.

introducingmonday.co.uk #

In case it ever comes to it
Saudi Arabia's tallest buildings #

Skyscraper junkie
An amazing image database of the world's skyscrapers. Search for a city, and architect, or a type of building; sort by date or height; and hey, presto. A sad entry on the New York page. 1 World Trade Center. Status: Destroyed. 2 World Trade Center. Status: Destroyed.

· New York [SkyscraperPage.com via Doctorow]

· London

· Destroyed
 #

Well, that's alright then
The Sun -- the UK tabloid -- had a kiss-and-tell story on Ronaldinho waiting to go if Brazil won. Smart thinking. Tabloid challenge: how do you deal with a foreigner who's just put you out of the World Cup, and given an English girl the best sex she's ever had?

Ronaldinho was like
a pneumatic drill [The Sun]
LUSTY lap dancer Lisa Collins told yesterday how Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho was “like a pneumatic drill” as he had sex with her all night. But even though she shared six hours of passion with the Samba striker, she revealed she would rather have bedded England’s David Beckham.
 #

Rabid English nationalist
I thought it would be fun to hang out with the Brazilians. More attractive people, and better music, certainly. The Coffee Shop on Union Square was full of them. And then, after Brazil equalized, the rabid English nationalist in me came out. I left at half-time for a bar full of wasted Brits. I needed to be among my own people. Only once every four years, you understand. The rest of the time I'm a snobby internationalist who bristles at the sight of the English flag. But last night was different.
England v Brazil photos [BBC] #

Thursday, June 20

Phew, that was a close one
That asteroid fly-by. Well, it was really, really, close. See this to-scale diagram. It looks like the asteroid passed just after midnight UK time. It came out of the sun, which is why we didn't see it; and would have hit somewhere in East Asia or the Pacific, where it was daytime. Another reason to stay indoors till it's dark.
A Close Asteroid Fly-By [Sky and Telescope via Instapundit] #

In our series on famous weblog couples
Get this: star all-American warblogger Matt Welch is seen consorting with a woman from -- boo, hiss -- France.

· The liaison revealed

· Blogallery #

Die, spammers, die
Everybody is talking about Cloudmark, a system which taps a network of email users to identify and block spammers. I've downloaded the software, and will tell you how it goes.
Cloudmark #

My Nawaq could never have done such a thing
Another car bomb in Saudi Arabia; another Westerner killed. Islamic militants are the obvious suspects, according to Saudi opposition groups. The Saudi oligarchs -- preposterously -- are blaming the attacks on Western bootleggers. That has about as much credibility as their claims that the September 11th hijackers weren't Saudis. Liars.
Seventeen months of Saudi mystery [BBC] #

Bad timing
Hungary's young conservatives lost the elections there just two months ago. And now they expose the fact that the Socialist candidate did work for the communist era intelligence service. Hey, guys, you're supposed to drag out the skeletons *before* the people vote.
Hungarian PM admits spy-catching past [BBC] #

Lawrence Lessig lays into Jack Valenti
Lawrence Lessig: End the war on sharing [Financial Times]
Lobbyists such as Jack Valenti do not seem to care much about the real economics affecting artists. For him, this battle is about basic morality - about the souls of our children as they are tempted into the corruption of "sharing". File-sharing, Valenti says, is "just theft". As we have zero-tolerance for theft, or drugs, or terrorism, so too we should have zero-tolerance for “sharing”.
 #

The bloggers' tube map
London's blog locator may be unoriginal; New York's map of blogs by subway stop came out last month. But the underlying London tube map -- on which the blogs are marked -- has always been much more elegant. Highbury & Islington is top with five blogs, so far. Farringdon, my old stomping ground, and London's dotcom nexus, has only two. Times change.

Tube #

England v. Brazil in New York
So, tonight's game between England and Brazil is the real final. In case you're wondering where to see the match, here's a suggestion: Felix, in SoHo. It's not Nevada Smith; that should be sufficient recommendation. Best to get there by midnight, because the place will be packed by kickoff at 02.30. And it's probably worth calling to make a reservation.


Felix

340 West Broadway

New York, NY 10013-2210

Phone: (212) 431-0021

Cross Streets: Grand Street

 #

Wednesday, June 19

A bunch of liars; a bunch of crock
On the subject of Arab lies, Alex B writes in with a well-argued rebuke. Others lie too; and Israel itself was founded on the big myth that Palestine was a land without people. Fair points. But there is a difference: Western lies tend to take the form of selective reading of the facts; Arab cultures seem to accept pure fabrication. In other words, Western lies are more sophisticated. Here's Alex B's letter:

   What a bunch of bunk. One could easily find many more examples of European or American or Australian lies that would fit the bill to a 't', not to mention Israeli lies which are far more sweeping and destructive, think the founding lie of the State of Israel: A people without land for a land without people. Arguably the most destructive lie since Hitler's death. Furthermore, your conclusions seem to be based in some sort of universe where lies and exagerations are more important than the truth underlying them. To wit, what is more important, that Arabs attempted to use the atrocities of Dier Yassin for their own benefit by trumping them up, or the fact that around 100 men, women, and children were massacred? Do you really think it was the accounts of rapes, or of murder of a village that caused people to flee?

   

Lying is something that comes natural to pretty much all societies and people. American and European lies are just as prevelant, just as easy to document, and just as easy to 'prove' as a cultural trait. Israeli lies are even easier to spot, isolate, and villify, but you would never do that because some forms of anti-semitism are acceptable, and others are not.

   

Having written all that, and having lived in the Arab world for some time, I know that 'lying' on one level is more common there. No one will refuse a request, and if you ask someone to meet you somewhere they will almost always say yes, even if they have no intention of arriving. However when you conflate these traits with important conflicts and battles, where lies on both sides are used to cover up ugly truths, you reduce one side of the equation to 'right' and the other to 'wrong'. A better post would be on lies told by both sides, to show that truth is at a premium in the region. Instead you go for the cheap shot to show how one side is culturally acclimated to lying, and thus annoy the intelligent side and not-anti-arab side of your readership. Focusing on lies told about awful truths (Deir Yassin) only furthers the sense that your viewpoint is horribly slanted against the very truth you claim to hold dear. #

Soccer, the last acceptable form of nationalism
Anne Applebaum makes the connection between soccer passion and Europe's politically correct disdain of patriotism. "In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism—even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism—is acceptable in Britain."
Flag on the Field [Slate] #

A bunch of liars
Cultural stereotypes are sweeping, unfair, dangerous -- and sometimes painfully accurate. Arabs -- in Arab cultures at least -- do have a tendency to lie. Blame desert politeness, the exaggeration of a souk storyteller, or the slipperiness of any subjugated people; still the conclusion is inescapable: you can't trust what they say. The latest reminder: an article by David Brooks, in The Atlantic, which dissects the mythical biography of Yasser Arafat. It's the most recent entry in a long catalogue of -- usually self-destructive -- Arab self-delusion.

· Arafat was born in Jerusalem [and many others]

· Jenin Lies

· None of the hijackers were Saudis

· Mossad behind the September 11th attacks

· Saudi ambassadors speak in their personal capacity

· The rapes of Deir Yassin #

The essential Philip K Dick
The SF author -- inspiration behind Spielberg's forthcoming Minority Report -- gets the credit he deserves in Time magazine. Dick is one of those writers to cite when people ask: isn't it all that scifi stuff for geeky teenagers who can't get laid? One of the few great SF writers. He was too prolific for it all to be good, but here are three classics:

· The Man in the High Castle

· Time Out of Joint

· The Penultimate Truth
 #

Useful things I've learned from Ken Layne
The Serval -- an African cat breed -- is as social as a dog, and likes to be walked on a leash.
Ken Layne #

Tuesday, June 18

Tear up the plan
This time some second-guessing of the administration by Congress is entirely in order. Even Gephardt's making sense. "We need to get the FBI and CIA to work better together," House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, said on Tuesday. "I think all possibilities will be looked at," said Gephardt, including putting the two agencies, or part of them, in the new department.

Bush Sends Homeland Security Plan to Congress [Reuters] #

Blog roundup
Still unconvinced about this whole weblog thang? Rick Bruner will overwhelm you with a tidal wave of press coverage. Which may only show that journalists like writing about weblogs.
But we all hope it's more significant.

Rick Bruner #

Bring back James Bond
From Ken Layne's latest column on Fox: "James Bond wouldn't get through the first interview round today — certainly not with the U.S. intelligence agencies. He drinks, smokes, gambles and wantonly disobeys dumb orders. He repeatedly engages in unsafe sex with unsafe women. Yet he beats the super-villains. Why? To use the most foul middle-management term of our era, he thinks outside the box."

U.S. Intelligence: Shaken, Not Stirred [Ken Layne] #

Blogger -- and regime change
Pop quiz: which of the following has done more to bring change to Iran?

· The Office of Strategic Influence, now closed

· Voice of America

· Chris Patten, readying the EU for trade talks

· The Christian Right, allied with the Iranian regime in defence of family values

· Blogger, which has brought self-expression to Iran

Farsi speakers can check out Hossein Derakhshan -- a weblog with a long list of Iranian weblogs from sidebar. #

Signs your kid is turning terrorist
Among them: "Begs for flight lessons while the other kids are going to driving school."

How to Spot a Terrorist in the Making [Ken Layne] #

The decline of Europe
First, France get trashed by Senegal, and fail to make it out of their group. Now Italy -- usually the strongest team in Europe -- fall to South Korea.
South Korea v Italy: Korea's golden moment [BBC] #

Play soccer, not war
Ken Layne has been calling soccer all kinds of nasty names, or at least he was until the US beat Mexico recently. He thinks the sport is inherently nationalist.

   Let's put aside the fact that Americans call themselves patriots and anyone else a nationalist. Here's an argument for soccer nationalism -- even at its ugliest: have you noticed how the countries that get most worked up about soccer are the ones with the most peaceful histories?

   Sweden, with some of the worst hooligans, and neutral for centuries. Italy, where the tanks only operate in reverse. Brazil, too busy sambaing to fight a war. Holland, the country of dope-smoking peaceniks. Passion for the country's soccer team is sublimated nationalism; soccer is what countries do when they've given up on war.

   So the soccer riot in Moscow last week is a sign of a country increasingly at peace with itself. And US indifference to the sport, and the national team, the win over Mexico notwithstanding? Well, the US still has real wars to fight.

· A win's a win [Ken Layne]

· Nationalist nightmare [Ken Layne] #

Bad timing, Ted
CNN chief accuses Israel of terror [Guardian]

Jerusalem Explosion Leaves 20 Dead [Washington Post] #

Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N.
"The alliance of conservative Islamic states and Christian organizations has placed the Bush administration in the awkward position of siding with some of its most reviled adversaries -- including Iraq and Iran -- in a cultural skirmish against its closest European allies, which broadly support expanding sexual and political rights. But the partnership also has provided the administration an opportunity to demonstrate that it shares many social values with Islam at a time when the United States is being criticized in the Muslim world for its continued support of Israel and the nine-month-old war on terrorism." Whoah, there. If you're going to be attacked -- as was the US in September -- for being decadent, you might as well actually stand up for decadence.
Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N. [Washington Post] #

Christopher Patten and the axis of evil
Patten cuddles up to Iran. Well, what's the harm? The American right has already nominated the EU to the axis of evil; Patten might as well fulfil the prophecy.
EU seeks closer ties with Iran [BBC] #

Monday, June 17

Dave Winer in hospital
Dave is a pain in the neck, and other places, but the web seems to go quiet when he's not posting.

Dave Winer #

Rebecca Blood's muddled thinking
I hate to criticize someone who thinks about global poverty, but Rebecca Blood's recent writing on agricultural trade is a classic example of right-minded muddled thinking. On the one hand she notes, sensibly, that US farm subsidies will "hurt rural farmers around the world." And in the very next post she claims: "Self-sufficiency must always be the first goal." It's the quest for self-sufficiency that has landed developing countries with heavy industry and high-tech inappropriate for their stage of development; and it is self-sufficiency that justifies the existence of subsidy farmers in Iowa and France. Development activists need to realize: self-sufficiency is an alluring but dangerous objective. Primitive man was self-sufficient; the Soviet Union aimed to be self-sufficient; interdependence is the very essence of human progress.

· Farm subsidies

· Self-sufficiency #

Minority Report
Good buzz for Minority Report, the sci-fi movie I've been waiting for all summer. The Hollywood Stock Exchange prices predict a $150m gross in the first four weeks of release. And The Bourne Identity opened more strongly than expected -- deservedly.
HSX: Minority Report #

Sunday, June 16

Bush and America's malaise
From the Reuters diagnosis of America's current malaise, a quote from a political scientist: "Bush seems to have lost his rhetorical ability to rally and inspire for the moment." To which one can can only say: did he ever ever have it?

   Theodore Roosevelt descriped the White House as a "bully pulpit" -- a platform from which to advocate and persuade. Oratory is a major source of presidential power, and Bush has none of it. Like Reagan, he has speechwriters for the words, but he would need an appetite for the podium, and some political compass. Both of which he lacks: I can just imagine him, nagged by his advisers to get out and speak, whining: oh, do I have to?

   Without the ability to inspire, all that Bush has left is a reputation for managerial competence, compromised by futile bureaucratic reorganization; credibility, tarnished by the plainly manipulative warnings of terrorist attacks; and Rove political savvy, which may win Pennsylvania, but cost Bush the last of his respect.

Is Scandal, Fear Inspiring Malaise Among Americans? [Reuters]

Bully Pulpit #

Licensed to kill
Maybe I'm naive, or poorly read, but doesn't this line from today's Washington Post scoop indicate a major shift in US policy? Read carefully: "The CIA is still operating in Afghanistan, and Bush has authorized covert action to disrupt, capture or destroy terrorists in as many as 80 countries. A highly classified worldwide attack matrix describes the levels of CIA covert action in these countries, including propaganda operations, support for internal police and foreign intelligence services, and lethal covert action against terrorist groups or individuals." Lethal covert action? Sounds like a policy of selective assassination to me. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. But it would be nice if the Bush administration occasionally acknowledged and explained what it was doing. Instead, we'll just read about mysterious disappearances in Pakistan, and the conspiracy theorists will have a field day.

President Broadens Anti-Hussein Order [Washington Post] #

Saturday, June 15

Agriculture wars
A wrap-up from the New York Times on US farm subsidies, and the damage they're doing to the global economy, with this quote: "American farm exports drive down prices paid to local farmers, reduce rural family income around the world and push farmers off the land and into overcrowded cities," said Mark Ritchie, president of the Institute for Agriculture Trade Policy. There's something wrong when it's easier to crash a plane into New York than ship rice to the US.

Raising Farm Subsidies, U.S. Widens International Rift [NY Times] #

The weblog gallery
As a small part of a broader weblog directory project, I'm collecting photos of weblog authors. The link to a sample gallery is below. In case you're wondering, the criteria for inclusion were Alexa position, celebrity factor -- and a whole lot of subjectivity. The gallery will expand. Feel free to send in additional photos, with the name of the blogger as the filename. This is a side project, so they may not be featured until the entire directory project is live. If you're one of the people featured in the gallery, and you want a picture taken down, let me know. I promise not to tell people you're vain. If any photographer wants a photo taken down, or credited, also contact me. My email address is top right. Please put "Gallery" in the subject line of all correspondence.

Blogallery #

When America slept
A transcript of Krauthammer's Jerusalem speech.

The Distinguished Rennert Lecture for 2002 [Charles Krauthammer] #

Israel: up goes the wall
Work on separation fence along Green Line to begin Sunday [Ha'aretz] #

How do you ask out Gwyneth Paltrow?
Back in London earlier this week, having a drink at the Electric, the Notting Hill branch of Soho House, and it's packed with celebs. Elizabeth Murdoch, the Digger's daughter, a few faces from British television -- and Gwyneth Paltrow. She walks out towards the door, alone, and my friend Harry downs his wine, jumps up like a man possessed, and follows her. He's saved from inevitable humiliation only by Gwyneth's cellphone, into which she starts speaking, just as he catches up. #

A new image of the Eagle Nebula
New Scientist #

How exactly do you refuse?
There I am, working myself up into an enjoyable lather over the Bush administration's prosecution of the campaign against Al-Qaeda, and a bunch of useless fools spoil my mood: the signatories of yesterday's letter of protest against external imperialism and domestic repression. There's Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner, of course, but don't forget Carol Downer of the Chico Feminist Women's Health Centre. The most jawdroppingly paleolithic line: "We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare." What a extraordinary way to go through life. Something comes along -- holocaust, terminal cancer, an attack on downtown Manhattan -- and we can just refuse to participate. Pathetic.

We won't deny our consciences [Guardian letters page] #

Anti-radiation pills
ki4u.com sells potassium iodide anti-radiation pills. In case you thought all you had to worry about was a dirty bomb in the US, they include this helpful map, showing how nuclear explosions in Asia spread fallout across the United States.

Map
ki4u.com #

End aid now
"... the biggest favour the rich could do the poor would be to give less aid—to their own farmers. Rich countries protect their farmers with subsidies, high tariffs, import quotas and a tangle of other barriers masquerading as health and safety standards. This makes it hard for farmers in poor countries to sell their produce in rich countries. The World Bank says that ending northern protection would boost poor countries' annual GDP by $30 billion, which would buy quite a few lunches."

World hunger [Economist] #

Cracks show in Bush's White House
"Something has gone awry in George Bush's White House. The administration's once impermeable self-confidence is beginning to show cracks. A string of blunders has revealed that it is increasingly unsure of itself."

Cracks show in Bush's White House [Guardian] #

The right man, but the wrong job
Peggy Noonan makes a powerful case for Rudy Giuliani's nomination to head the new department of Homeland Security. "His temperament was at odds with peace. He flourishes in war. When there wasn't a war he created battles just for fun and out of need. Now we have a war, and it is big enough for him. In this war, as a bureaucratic leader and policy setter, his flaws--impatience, combativeness--will be virtues." But this new department is fundamentally flawed. It will employ 169,000 people, but have no overseas intelligence resources, and no responsibility for domestic anti-terrorism arrests and indictments. And even Rudy won't be able to bash the CIA and FBI into shape. Look how he feuded with New York's schools board, and ultimately failed to reform education. Nominate Rudy, and we'll get a titanic three-way feud with Ashcroft and Tenet of the CIA. Rudy is the right man for the job, but it's the wrong job.

Rudy's Duty [Peggy Noonan via Jeff Jarvis] #

Friday, June 14

All that glitters is not
Be glad that I have a one-rule for posts, otherwise you'd get the long, infuriating story of my dealings with Citibank, the world's most over-rated bank. I've just found out they cut off my old Citibank debit card -- because I opened a new, supposedly elite Citigold account. That's right: they mess up your life -- because you deposit more money with them, and agree to pay higher fees. Oh, and to get a new Mastercard, attached to the Citigold account, you have to apply. By these standards, the FBI is a model of efficiency.

Citiaction #

Visiting lists
And people think that social networks -- and blogrolling -- are new. This, from an article on the Social Register, the directory of America's ruling class. The Social Register was first published in 1886 "as an extension of a visiting list—a Victorian conceit where people kept lists of whom they’d have in their houses and whom they would visit."

The Forbes Family is Scaling Back Social Register [NY Observer] #

Fingerprint the Saudis
You know things are bad when Robert Fisk starts making sense. In the midst of his ranting, there's actually a crystal clear paragraph, on the absurdity of the new US security rules, which cover Iranians and Iraqis, but not citizens of Saudi Arabia.'The suicide-hijackers came principally from Saudi Arabia, with one from Egypt and another from Lebanon. The men whom the Moroccans have arrested – all supposedly linked to al-Qa'ida – are all Saudis. Yet Saudis – who comprised the vast majority of the September killers – are going to have no problems entering the US under the new security rules. In other words, men and women from the one country whose citizens the Americans have every reason to fear will be exempt from any fingerprinting, or photographing, or interrogation, when they arrive at JFK. Because, of course, Saudi Arabia is one of the good guys, a "friend of America", the land with the greatest oil reserves on earth.'

Mr Bush's titanic war on terror will eventually sink beneath the waves [Independent] #

Thursday, June 13

New York Brits: be a World Cup star
An agency is casting for ESPN commercial. Needs British soccer fans, men and women that will watch and react to a game on TV. No need to be a real actor. The shoot will take place June 20-21 and thy are auditioning people today and tomorrow. Please call Tom (cell) 516.885.9966 or tomorrow 212.505.5000. #

Wednesday, June 12

Correction: Jish is not the highest-ranking individual weblogger
I think the general point holds: the web elves have more links than traffic; and the warbloggers more traffic than links. If I have a moment, I'll crunch the numbers. However, Jish.nu is a bad example, as Jason Kottke points out.

> Similarly, Jish of jish.nu is actually the highest-ranking individual
> weblog author on Blogdex

Kottke comments: "Not true. The page on Jish's site that's in the top 10 at Blogdex is a weblog webring: http://www.jish.nu/webloggers/. That explains the high number of links (lots of bloggers have the webring link on their sites) but the low Alexa ranking (not many people actually use webrings). But the big problem with both Blogdex and Daypop is that they index a teeny tiny part of the weblog universe. Blogdex indexes 12,000 sites and Daypop only indexes 7500 (and that includes news sites as well). Alexa has this problem as well. A bunch of people undoubtedly use Alexa's toolbar, but I don't know anyone that does...and there are millions of people on AOL or using Netscape that are unable to. What we have are a few blurry snapshots of different little bits of the Web, making it difficult to tell if it's a rope, a tree, a wall, or an elephant." #

Ashcroft loses the plot
Ashcroft is always behind the game. Cheney says a nuclear attack is inevitable, which terrifies everybody, and changes the subject from intelligence failures before September 11th. And Ashcroft thinks, a couple of weeks late, that he should join in the scaremongering. Didn't he get the message? Scaremongering week is over.

   And he's as incompetent at scaremongering as he is at everything else. Al Muhajir -- the supposed dirty bomber -- is pretty transparently a flake. He's Latino, and a former Chicago gang member; Arab terrorist groups might encourage him to cause trouble, but they're racists, and they'd never involve him in a complex plot. Think about it: they don't even involve Afghans or Pakistanis.

   And now Wolfowitz has poured cold water on Ashcroft's overheated speculation. "I don't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and (Al Muhajir's) coming in here obviously to plan further deeds," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told CBS on Tuesday.

   You can get arrested for calling in a false bomb warning. Ashcroft has cried wolf one time too many. At best he's incompetent; at worst he's clutching at any arrests that will distract attention from the failures of the justice system. Ashcroft has got to go.

Threat of 'dirty bomb' softened [USA Today] #

Tuesday, June 11

So many links, so little traffic
I'm tired of the whole techblogger/warblogger discussion, but was curious to see a discrepancy between the Blogdex and Alexa rankings of the two groups. For instance, Ernie from littleyellowdifferent.com ranks high on Blogdex, with 546 inbound links; but his traffic rank in Alexa is only 117,759. Similarly, Jish of jish.nu is actually the highest-ranking individual weblog author on Blogdex, with 1,087 inbound links; but ranks at 164,940 on Alexa. Ernie and Jish are both Bay Area guys whom Richard Bennett would describe as "web elves".

   Now take some of the leading warbloggers -- I know they hate the term -- such as Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds and Ken Layne. They all score more weakly than the web elves on the Blogdex rankings, but better on Alexa. One obvious hypothesis: the web elves were there first with weblogs, which is why they have a legacy of inbound links; but the warbloggers have a wider audience.

· Blogdex

· Alexa #

Saudi Arabia: the final tally
Saudi Arabia go out of the World Cup with zero goals in three matches -- the worst performance of any team in Japan. One player was assassinated after Colombia crashed out of the last World Cup; I presume the Saudis will stick to Islamic punishments, like amputation of the odd hand.

Statistics Group E [BBC] #

The mouse that roared
Inspired by stories of economic growth in Kosovo and Afghanistan, Gordon Mohr writes in to remind me of an Ealing Comedy movie from 1959. The concept: "the impoverished duchy of Grand Fenwick decides to declare war on the United States, fully expecting to lose and thereby ending up with tons of free American aid."

· The mouse that roared [IMDB] #

Monday, June 10

The Afghan economic miracle
Buried in a Reuters dispatch about UN funding, is an amazing story: more than a million Afghan refugees have returned to the country in the last three months. Sure, Afghanistan remains unstable; regional warlords have set up little statelets; and violence continues outside Kabul. But the country is on the cusp of a remarkable economic boom.

   First of all, Afghanistan has enjoyed the largest injection of funds since it took up arms against the Soviet Union. CIA bribes to warlords, CNN payments to security guards and translators, the ongoing presence of peacekeepers and aid workers: this is a fiscal stimulus program that works. Rents in upscale parts of Kabul are at New York levels.

   And now a million refugees, many of them members of Kabul's middle class, have returned. The other night there was a great segment on Simpson's World, John Simpson's unedited blog to camera on the BBC, in which he mentioned the economic downturn -- in Pakistan, as refugee Afghan carpet manufacturers and other businessmen return home. Pakistan's loss will be Afghanistan's gain.

   This ought to shut up western handwringers who complained that the US was bombing the rubble. The return of refugees in such large numbers is a strong indication of the improvement of governance since the fall of the Taliban regime, and a vindication of US intervention. US intervention may in fact be too positive for a country's economy. Witness Kosovo, which is in the middle of a housing boom funded by western assistance. Much more of this and we'll have impoverished countries starting fake civil wars -- as a cry for help.
U.N. Says Lacks Funds for Returning Afghan Refugees [Reuters]

Kabul property prices soar [Reuters] #

Friday, June 7

All power to the CIA
The new Department of Homeland Security is a terrible idea, as Charles Dodgson implies. Rather than two major agencies, often at loggerheads, now we'll have three.

   Here's an alternative, from the world of business. Many large companies, which face the same issues as governments, have been organizing themselves around their target markets: Global 2000 corporate customers, small businesses, and consumers, for example; or finance, pharma, and car manufacturers. It's an approach which jargon-wielding businesspeople would call customer-centric, a response to the increasingly global markets in which companies operate.

   Well, terrorism is increasingly global too, and the old divide between domestic and external security is meaningless. There is no way the FBI is qualified to do the job; it sounds like CIA work to me. So, stop fudging the issue, and give the job to the one organization that can do it: take domestic anti-terrorism away from the FBI and give it to the CIA. Let the FBI stick to the mafia.

   What to do about agencies such as the INS, which have a role in gathering information for anti-terrorist measures? Put a CIA taskforce in the INS, with full rights to all data. I can already hear the civil liberties crowd moaning about America spying on its own people. Deal with it.
Homeland security department [Charles Dodgson] #

Thursday, June 6

The myth of American efficiency
“American efficiency is that indomitable force which neither knows nor recognizes obstacles.” – Joseph Stalin. America: so efficient that even Soviet dictators swoon. But is it really?


   To be sure, America and efficiency have long been synonymous, ever since Frederick Winslow Taylor invented scientific management, and Henry Ford introduced mass production. The reputation is so much taken for granted that hotel brochures routinely advertise a fusion of European-charm and American-efficiency, as if the words were joined at the hip.


   Too bad so many services in the US offer American charm and European efficiency. From telecommunications to banking, defence to airport security, from Wall Street to Main Street, the US offers countless examples of waste, mediocre customer service and antiquated systems.


   Granted, this is not the best moment to disparage the US economy. Despite the recession, the US has enjoyed strong growth in productivity. Non-farm productivity rose 8.4% in the first quarter. The US does indeed have the highest output per head of any large industrial country -- even if gross domestic product per hour worked is higher in more laid-back countries such as Italy, and Belgium. Yes, Belgium.


   But, rather than descend into an econometric treatise, let me turn to my real purpose, a qualitative analysis of the US economy -- otherwise known as a rant against all those services that have reduced me to a sputtering frustration.


   Let's start with banking, in fact, with the most basic requirement of banking: the transfer of funds to another person. Did you know that, even now, it is impossible to remit electronically in the US? The much-touted online banking services ask for the address of the payee, and physically print out a cheque. Alternatively, you can fax in a wire transfer form. How primitive.


   Telephones. Putting aside the hassle of managing separate local and long-distance providers, US mobile phones are dismal. Setting up a mobile phone, which in the UK requires a two-minute zip through a Virgin store, takes in the US endless calls to customer service, and credit control. Not to speak of poor reception, and handsets which would be embarrassing to any fashion-conscious European.


   Retail. Frederick Winslow Taylor’s principle was that the system comes before the individual. “In our scheme, we do not ask for the initiative of our men,” he said. It shows. US retail chains have excellent procedures, but heaven help the customer if her request is outside the bounds of the handbook. Remember that sales assistants are the product of one of the world’s worst public education systems.


   Real estate. In New York, this is a complete racket. Agents may represent either the buyer or the seller, and sometimes both, a complex system which has the effect of locking in the agents’ near monopoly. The standard estate agent commission is an astronomical 6%. Only in New York could a London estate agent – Foxtons, which is trying to break the cartel – be regarded as efficient.


   Healthcare. Better not get into a discussion of the bureaucracy of the US managed care system, because the UK’s own National Health Service has its share of unnecessary paperwork. Just look at the bigger picture: the US spends $4180 per capita on healthcare compared with $1,532 in the UK, but US average life expectancy is lower. On the other hand, American doctors are wonderfully wealthy.


   Industry. 19th century industries such as steel and textiles have as much trouble competing with cheaper imports as they have had in Europe. The only difference: in some European countries such as the UK, these industries are being wound down, while it is the current US administration that puts up trade barriers to protect loss-making firms. There is something wrong with this picture.


   Wall Street. It was only a few years ago that we were told that stockmarkets were much more efficient than clunky European conglomerates at allocating capital. Look at the investment in information technology, funded by the greatest ever stockmarket boom. Well, look at Japan’s stockmarket-fuelled over-investment in industrial equipment in the 1980s. Capital investment is not necessarily productive, though try telling that to an irrationally exuberant stockmarket.


   Government. Well, at least the US has the world’s most effective military machine, right? Well, yes, by default. But let us not forget the Air Force flight jockeys – members of one of the most Luddite trade unions left on either side of the Atlantic – who furiously resist the eminently sensible development of remote-controlled drones. Of course, they are supported by Congressmen with Air Force bases, so expect to see several more generations of ludicrously expensive manned planes which provide a kick that no flight simulator ever can.


   As for homeland security: it recently became evident that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have had access neither to email or the web, two tools adopted rapidly by Al-Qaeda; and the newly federalized airport security force is ruthlessly confiscating nail scissors from little old ladies.


   At their best, American organizations live up to its reputation. My roll of honour includes service in New York restaurants, the production of turbines at GE, the price of goods at Walmart, Google’s search engine, PayPal’s money transfer system, and Tahoe ski rental and lifts. But large swathes of US business and public services are – like Stalin’s admiring quote on American efficiency – looking dated. #

Wednesday, June 5

Monsanto pollutes the web
George Monbiot, in a surprising detour into factual reporting, tracks down an pseudonymous message-board poster to a PR agency hired by Monsanto. '"Mary Murphy" uses a hotmail account for posting messages to AgBioWorld. But a message satirising the opponents of biotech, sent by "Mary Murphy" from the same hotmail account to another server two years ago, contains the identification bw6.bivwood.com. Bivwood.com is the property of Bivings Woodell, which is part of the Bivings Group."'

The fake persuaders [Guardian via Doctorow] #

Forward to a friend
A new gizmo on nickdenton.org: forward a post to a friend. Next to every # mark -- indicating a permalink -- there is now an @ sign -- indicating an "email this" link. If you click, the link will automatically open up a new email, and include the permalink in the message body. #

At least have the decency to lose
"The pressure from Portugal was incessant after the second goal, but America held out valiantly to cause one of the biggest World Cup shocks ever." All you American supremacists out there, if you're going to dis the World Cup, at least have the decency to lose.

USA v Portugal | USA stun Portugal [BBC] #

Sex toys for our times
Gosh, I'm in a crass mood this week. Normal service - steel tariffs and weblog minutiae - will resume soon. In the meantime, here's the hottest current sex toy. Pervy Pervez brings you... the A-bomb. Available in black or green. Unsurprisingly, given the curent rush, out of stock.

· A-bomb [Eros Toy Store] #

Abolish the Office of Homeland Security
Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points: "The point is not that Tom Ridge is a bad guy or even that he has failed at his job. The point is that he has no job and to the extent that one can infer what his job might be he has been given no resources or powers or support to succeed at it." Spot on. There are already too many organizations in the intelligence community, which leads to turf wars and buck-passing. The administration should be merging and reforming existing organization, not creating new ones that mess up government even more. This is gesture management of the worst kind.

Joshua Micah Marshall #

Ken Layne and the soccer hooligans
   "Soccer is an old-school sport based on nationality and nationalism," concludes Ken Layne. Oh yeah? Explain to me then, Ken, why 6/11 players for Arsenal are foreign, 7/11 at Liverpool, and 8/11 at Manchester United. National teams are based on nationality, duh; at least, in soccer, people are actually aware of other countries and, amazingly, continue to watch the game even if their country isn't playing. By contrast, in sporting events in which the US actually bothers to compete with other countries, it prefers to ignore the fact they exist.

   I don't deny that soccer nationalism can get ugly; but it can also be uplifting. Witness the giant crowds on the streets of Paris in 1998, celebrating Zinedine Zidane, the star of the French team, whose family came from North Africa. Ken was in the middle of a basketball orgasm when he wrote this column for Fox, so we'll forgive his warped selection of facts this time. But, do it again, and we'll send in the English soccer hooligans to stomp all over you.

What World Cup? We've Got the NBA [Fox News]
 #

Job wanted
Eric Martin was such a great hire that I even wrote an article inspired by him. He worked for Moreover Technologies three days a week, as a copywriter, and achieved more than do most full-time employees, with less fuss. As a colleague, he's a delight; I can't recommend him highly enough. Anyway, he's returning to the US this summer, and looking for an editorial or writing job in New York or San Francisco. Eric's also writing a novel, his third, so the work needs to be part-time. If you'd like an introduction -- and you'd be crazy not to -- email me at . #

Job offered
A wealthy friend of mine, bored of supporting physical museums, is intending to fund an online cultural encyclopedia, which he describes as DMOZ meets H.G. Wells. Two basic controls, chronological and geographical: you plug in a date and a location and the device takes you to what happened. Rather than hire hundreds of editors, I'm thinking the most scaleable approach would be to cross-reference Google with a cultural chronology, in much the same way as Dan Egnor has added to traditional keyword searching the ability to search for web pages within a particular geographic locale. That's just one idea. John Hunt, the benefactor, is open to suggestions and introductions. Email .

· Dan Egnor [Google programming contest] #

Tuesday, June 4

Who came first?
A few warbloggers and Bay Area techies are arguing: whose weblog came first? Depends on your definition of a weblog, really. I don't have a dog in this fight, but for the sad obsessives interested, there's an ongoing discussion on Richard Bennett's website.

The first blogs #

The Clinton Wall
The Arab-Israeli conflict may seem hopeless, but it isn't. Palestinian suicide attacks have reduced Israel's willingness to sustain the most exposed settlements. And, without negotiations, the separation of the West Bank is taking place. Israel is building a physical divide between it and the West Bank. What's the betting that the effective border will be more or less along the lines drawn up during the negotiations at Camp David and Taba? We can call it the Clinton Wall. "The 110-kilometer long strip is meant to protect the main areas that have been targeted by terrorists from Jenin, Nablus, Tul Karm and Qalqiliyah. It will link up with fences and walls that are already in place or being built now, near Bat Hefer and Qalqiliyah."

PM okays Green Line border fence [Ha'aretz] #

Palestinian pre-crime
   Dawson Jackson comes close to justifying genocide in a discussion around Zionism and the rights of Arabs whose families lived in Palestine before the Jewish state. First read this. 'I will say this: you ask "do the lives and homes of the people who were living there count for nothing? " I say, perhaps not for nothing, but frankly, not for much. Never have amounted to a whole lot I'd contend. You ask "Is it right for the Palestinian Arabs to have suffered for crimes that others committed against the Jewish people?" I anwser, ABSOLUTLY. Not, of course for,say, the Nazi's. But they have ample blood on their hands as it is.'

   Parse what Dawson's saying. Palestinian lives count for little, because they have never amounted to a whole lot. And they have deserved to suffer, presumably from the moment of Israel's inception, retroactively, because of their participation in conflict and later dependence on terrorism. In the forthcoming movie, Minority Report, a department of pre-crime punishes people for their future offences. That's the logic of Dawson's comment: that the Palestinians were worthless because they never made anything of the land; and congenitally guilty from the arrival of Jews in Palestine because their descendents would turn to terrorism.

   Don't get me wrong. I think the Palestinian strategy is misguided; suicide bombing abhorrent; their government an embarrassing reflection of an immature political culture; and Arafat a creep. Run by Palestinians, the original Palestine would be the dry fly-infested slum that is Gaza.

   But Dawson is taking a huge and dangerous step beyond that. Here's a thought experiment. African-Americans in the US, despite all the progress of the last fifty years, are still more likely to commit crime; and the politically incorrect might say, to paraphrase Dawson: they have never amounted to a whole lot. Does he really want to go there; do any of us? Part of the genius of the West is a respect for human beings, however shiftless; the presumption of innocence; and a respect for property, however inefficiently that property is used. In the land that was once Palestine, all those principles have been violated.

Dawson Speaks [see comments] #

Currently sampling...








· Spolsky

· LinkMachineGo

· in stereo!

· Media whores online

· Bruner

· Executive Summary

· Q Daily News

· Northrup

· Widepipe

· Lombardi

· OxBlog

· Azhar

· O'Brien

· iaslash.org


 · Marlow

 · Dash

 · Murray

 · Marshall

 · Miller

 · Gruner

 · Yglesias

 · Eminent Brain

 · Goldstein

 · Lasica

 · Werbach

 · Travers

 · Richard

 · Guardian weblog

 · Coates
#

mknherhappy
This eBay seller has learned a trick or two from car manufacturers at tradeshows. Cleaveges sell. They sell anything. In this case, some vintage tools, including a C-clamp.

item 2108375753 [eBay via David] #

The Right writes better
"For a com-symp liberal East Coast weenie, I find myself reading the right-wing press a lot. The reason escaped me for a long time - I thought I was in the grips of some post-911 fascist meltdown, or that I was finally acknowledging my inner Republican. But that's not the reason. The real reason is that the Right writes better."

Favorite right-wing commentators [Andrew Northrup] #

Afrikaans insults
A correspondent, who shall remain nameless, writes in to claim that Afrikaans trumps Hungarian as a language of earthy slang. This is a family blog, so no excerpts, and click only if you're over 18 years old and have an agricultural sense of humor.

Afrikaans slang [parental advisory] #

Monday, June 3

Nolita name-dropping
I made the mistake of sitting under a street poster for CQ, the debut movie of Roman Coppola. Yes, as in Francis Ford, his dad. This being Nolita, North of Little Italy, in downtown New York, a woman stops, and tells her friend: oh, yes, my friend did the sound on that. Literally a minute later, another gaggle halts and the beret notes, with unmistakeable bitterness: directed by Roman Coppola. "He was in my film class. Produced by Francis Ford. What a surprise." #

Hungarian slang
Hungary may not be the soccer powerhouse it once was and it's a shrunken remnant of its former expanse, but the country's still up in the slang rankings. This alternative dictionary has 175 entries for Hungarian, more than French, German or Russian. The genius of east European swearing is the juxtaposition of body parts, family members, and animals. Consider yourself warned.

The Alternative Hungarian Dictionary #

Gay magnet
An interesting experiment. Find a free-market social conservative, and ask them how they deal with this: hard research that shows that cities with gays and other non-conformists do better. "This is where gays and bohemians come in. Towns that have lots of them, Mr. [Richard] Florida argues, are more likely to have creative-class workers, high-tech industry and, as a result, strong economic growth. Not because there are disproportionate numbers of gays and bohemians in high-tech jobs, he explains, but because their presence signals an open-minded and varied community of the sort that appeals to software engineers and entrepreneurs."

Creative Cities and Their New Elite [New York Times] #

War profiteers
I don't have a problem with pork per se. Better a politician who can be bought than one who simply obstructs the broader good. But it's extraordinary, and outrageous, that politicians have attached pet projects to the homeland security bill. The should pay a price. What I want is a list ranking the most egregious pork hogs, and a political action committee that funds challenges: make them pay a poltical price for raiding the public purse. Here's the list - from USA Today - of the politicians who see the threat of nuclear attack on the US as a great occasion to hold up the political system. If these people were businessmen, they would be called profiteers.

· Rep. Dave Obey, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee

· Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee

· eight New York and Pennsylvania lawmakers who get higher Medicare payments to hospitals in the districts

· Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Robin Hayes of North Carolina — who cast politically risky votes for a free-trade bill Bush wanted

Security bill has plenty of pork [USA Today] #

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
A brilliantly counter-intuitive idea from Daniel Brenner about the rebuilding of the site of the World Trade Center. "Building a mosque on the site would also send a message to the Islamic world about America, and our commitment to the freedom of religion. At a time when many Muslims are being fed endless distortions about America and what we value, it will take more than a publicity mission by Muhammad Ali to change America’s image."

Beliefnet via Andrew Sullivan #

The Nielsen backlash
Jakob Nielsen, the media's favorite usability expert, gets taken down by Jeff Jarvis. His site is a mess, with links that don't work, and disappearing images. And Cameron Barrett says Nielsen gets more attention than he deserves. Having said that, my own permalinks are on the fritz. And I borrowed this site design from Jason Kottke. So I won't weigh in.
Jeff Jarvis

Cameron Barrett #

Attractive power
Joseph Nye, Harvard professor and author: "Because of its leading position in the information revolution and its past investment in traditional power resources, the United States will probably remain the world's most powerful single country well into this new century. While potential coalitions to check American power could be created, it is unlikely that they would become firm alliances unless the United States handles its hard coercive power in an overbearing unilateral manner that undermines its soft or attractive power - the important ability to get others to want what you want."

The paradox of American power #

Sunday, June 2

I always knew Peter Maass was special
A funny story, from Peter Maass, about journalists, special forces, an encounter in Afghanistan, satphones, and mistaken identity. "Another day, an [Afghan] commander I was interviewing asked me to teach him how to use his new Irridium satphone. When I showed him how, he was mightily impressed and treated me with the deference usually accorded to a member of the Special Forces, which I’m sure he thought I was."

Peter Maass #

Sullivan has been out of the country too long
Andrew Sullivan with a ludicrous throwaway line about the new British establishment. "Except the current establishment is no longer the fusty, puritan condescension of Lord Reith, but the fusty, trendy condescension of the Blair generation, the former student radicals whose anti-Americanism is as ingrained as their addiction to pop-cultural ephemera." I do wonder who he hangs out with when he goes back to London. New Labour, anti-American? Who on earth is Sullivan talking about? Tony Blair would be happier as New Democrat governor of Massachusetts; Gordon Brown heads to Martha's Vineyard for vacation; the smartest young advisers, such as Ed Balls, all went to Harvard; Jonathan Friedland, one of the most influential columnists on the Guardian, made his name with a book on the Anglo-American republican tradition; and they all watch the West Wing, for God's sake. They may not love everything about America, but they do love upscale East Coast. Andrew Sullivan's been out of the country too long.

Andrew Sullivan #

Guest blogger: Patrick Nielsen Hayden
PNH - he of Electrolite - is on great form. I spent half an hour there this morning. He picks out a jaw-dropping piece about political correctness in high-school literature teaching, an article from the Weekly Standard about US self-absorption, and introduces a very unbloggerly feature: bundles of links, wait for it, without commentary. Go read.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden #

Online uprising
Catherine Seipp writes the best piece I've seen on political weblogs. Pedantic nitpick: she doesn't even mention their precursors, the Bay Area techie blogs; I feel history being edited here. However, Seipp does capture the cranky free-thinking of Glenn Reynolds and other bloggers, and understands their wider influence. "Within a few months, the blogging revolution rendered obsolete Mark Twain's famous crack about never arguing with a man who buys ink by the barrel--and that goes for the man who buys bandwidth by the barrel, too."
American Journalism Review #

Saturday, June 1

Saudi soccer: With supporters like that...
"JEDDAH, 1 June — The presence of Prince Nawaf ibn Faisal, deputy chief of the Youth Welfare Presidency and vice president of the Saudi Football Federation, made the Kingdom’s team brim with confidence at the final moments of their training and preparation last evening at Sapporo’s main stadium where the team is tackling Germans today."

Nawaf’s presence makes team confident [ArabNews]