Also from Slashdot is Ray Bradbury’s testimony to the President’s Commission on Implementation on U.S. Space Exploration Policy. He has some interesting ideas on the place and time humanity finds itself in. I like this quote:
That’s fascinating to think about – isn’t it? Four hundred years before Kitty Hawk, an Italian lands on an empty shore, and four hundred years later the Wright Brothers take off into the air above the Earth.
Just came across this story on Slashdot. Another new phrase is coined – but I would still call them blogs, except they are being used in slightly different way.
So plog is short for ‘project log’. It’s basically a blog – why coin a new and slightly-more-daft-sounding word? Still though it is good way of keeping track of progress, the Pentagon have recently started using blogging for some projects.
Michael Totten has the lowdown on the New Yorker’s report concerning Don Rumsfeld. His verdict:
While I’m aware it could be absolute nonsense, not a single word seems implausible.
For my part I was not as shocked as most by the photos from prisons in Iraq. I read an article about methods used in last October’s Atlantic Monthly. It was written by Mark Bowden, who has also written a piece on the goings-on in Abu Ghraib. Bowden notes:
The only way to prevent interrogators from feeling licensed to abuse is to make them individually responsible for their actions. If I lean on an insurgent leader who knows where surface-to-air missiles are stockpiled, then I can offer the defense of necessity if charges are brought against me. I might be able to persuade the court or tribunal that my ugly choice was justified. But when a prison, an army, or a government tacitly approves coercive measures as a matter of course, widespread and indefensible human-rights abuses become inevitable. Such approval unleashes the sadists. It leads to severe physical torture (because there can never be a clear line between coercion and torture), to rape, and to murder.
These things may already have happened. The Bush Administration has tried to walk a dangerous line in these matters. The President has spoken out against torture, but his equivocations on the terms of the Geneva Convention suggest that he perceives wiggle room between ideal and practice. There are reports that Administration lawyers quietly drafted a series of secret legal opinions last year that codified the “aggressive” methods of interrogation permitted at U.S. detention facilities—which, if true, effectively authorized in advance the use of coercion.
Perhaps the most disturbing evidence of this mindset was Donald Rumsfeld’s long initial silence on the Abu Ghraib photos. His failure to alert the President or congressional leaders before the photos became public—and he knew they were going to become public—leads one to conclude that he didn’t think they were a very big deal. If so, this reveals him to be astonishingly tone-deaf, or worse. Maybe he simply wasn’t shocked.
I have added an atom.xml feed to the blog, for those of you have started using aggregators. I think it’s working anyway.
Kieran Healy is reading Robert Skidelsky’s John Maynard Keynes, something I have been meaning to read for some time. He is the father of Will Skidelsky, whom I met while interning for the New Statesman.
Interesting stuff that I did not realise about Wittgenstein – the Tractatus is somewhere very far down my books to read.
For the moment I am sticking with Paul Kennedy’s, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
Dan Drezner is calling for a boycott of the new film – I for one love this kind of stuff. As much as alot of is plain nonsense – I’m a sucker for big epic special effects pop-corn movies. I had the same buzz with Independence Day, and no doubt it will be the same for this film.
As for the environmental aspect, I think MoveOn.org are taking this one just a bit too far. But as already discussed on this blog, I am of the opinion that global warming is taking place, and that Carthage must be destroyed.
Tom Mangan has an interesting post from last week, on how bloggers might be able to make money – ghost blogging.
He thinks that eventually famous people might start blogging, perhaps as a publicity tool. And since they might not have the time, they might hire fans to do the blogging for them.
His advice: start blogging about your favourite celeb, they might just hire you. Looks like Isabelle will be hired by Eminem then!
What you do is: create this wonderful celeb blog, attract all this attention and traffic, and when the celeb’s “people” contact you, you say, “well, you know, I’d love to be able to do this full-time, but …..”
Kevin Drum poses the question:
Should the Geneva Conventions apply to captured Taliban fighters? And if you think they shouldn’t, why not?
I think he may also mean to terrorists in general, not just Taliban fighters. He also adds that:
If you want to argue that it’s because war on terrorism is somehow more critical or more deadly than either the Cold War (potential global Armageddon, Europe/world saved from communism) or World War II (60 million dead, Europe/world saved from fascism), you’d better make a mighty good case.
And while you’re at it, you should also plainly state whether you think suspending the Conventions applies only to the U.S., or if it’s OK for everyone else as well. Might as well get all our cards out on the table at once.
A mighty interesting debate could be the result. Where do I stand?
Erring on the side of the Geneva Convention folks.
In case you missed it, Kevin Drum has the transcript from the rather funny episode of Meet the Press, where one of Colin Powell’s aides goes a bit crazy and ends an interview in the middle of a question. Powell seemed a bit surprised – and wanted to answer the question. She wanted to end it.
Russert: Finally, Mr. Secretary, in February of 2003, you placed your enormous personal credibility before the United Nations and laid out a case against Saddam Hussein citing…
Emily: You’re off.
Powell: I am not off.
Emily: No. They can’t use it. They’re editing it. They (unintelligible).
Powell: He’s still asking me questions.
Emily: He was not…
Powell: Tim, I’m sorry, I lost you.
Russert: I’m right here, Mr. Secretary. I would hope they would put you back on camera. I don’t know who did that.
Powell: We’ve really scre…
Russert: I think that was one of your staff, Mr. Secretary. I don’t think that’s appropriate.
Powell: Emily, get out of the way.
Emily: OK.
Powell: Bring the camera back, please. I think we’re back on, Tim. Go ahead with your last question.
I think she just lost her job.
Ingrid Jones has linked to me, I think she may have found me through Clive Soley’s weblog, though I can’t be sure. She has a nice blog – check it out. Time to update the blogroll.
Dan Gillmor has pointed to two very interesting pieces that talk about issues raised on this blog last week.
Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis discuss the ins and outs – it certainly brings together all the arguments put forward on this blog. Go read them.
I wanted to articulate this myself, but Jay has done a better job than I could have done. I have also received requests from the US do put the link back up. Decisions, decisions.
Jeff Jarvis picks out the crux of Jay’s argument well, of protectionist journalism, Jay decries:
You shouldn’t do it, because if you keep doing it you will soon be talking about “the masses” and what they will swallow. Soon after that you will be talking about what the masses should be fed. I don’t trust anyone’s argument–left, right, middle, fringe–when it assumes that others (the big audience, the mass public, the voters overall) will react with less nuance, intelligence, or critical thought than the writer and the writer’s friends. To me it’s a warning sign: anti-democratic attitude here in evidence.
Jeff then concludes, pretty much thinking along the same lines as myself:
This is an extreme example of the revolution journalism is facing: When the people can see the news for themselves and judge for themselves, what is the role of journalists’ news judgment? Are we merely to become a pipeline for source material? Are we merely fellow citizens, like our readers, with opinions of our own? Do we still think we know more (and better) than the audience or do we admit that the citizens know more we do?
Because they try to imitate his clothing, his body attitude, because they dyed their hair blonde, many lookalikes may pretend to resemble Eminem.
A few of them can be viewed on the following websites:
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I have removed the links to the Berg video and pictures. I don’t think there’s any need to keep it there any longer -
Slashdot has a story from the Register that Claire from DCU had a look at trying to find out what the blanked out words in declassified documents said.
Sounds like she was pretty successful.
This misadventure actually happened to a 12 years old Eminem fan in 2000:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/ozwash/sep00/juke12091100a.asp
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