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was kind enough to send some linkage my way today, so a big ‘hey there’ to any of her regulars stopping by. And just to be clear: no, you won’t find any actual blackmail photos of her on the site. Sorry!

Instapundit says that Blogosphere is the Rolling Stone of the 21st century”.

Does that mean Glenn gets to be Cameron Crowe?

The BBC one of Iran’s ruling conservative clerics saying that Iran “is on the threshold of an explosion. If popular discontent increases, society and the regime will be threatened.”

While this kind of statement comes regularly from the “reformers” in Iran, this fellow is on the conservative side of the fence, and hence his statement bears greater significance.

I’ll regard this as tentatively hopeful for now; let’s just hope that the ruling Islamists don’t take the Chinese approach to quelling dissent.

I’m not sure if I just don’t understand German culture or if this is weird.

Update: OK, it’s apparently bizarro world day in Germany.

Michael Moore got a ovation at Cannes at the premiere of his new film, Bowling for Columbine.

I think I’ll get out of the way now before I get caught in the incoming fire from Instapundit & the rest o’ the blogosphere…

Is anyone else reading the print publication The Week?

It’s basically Today’s Papers in print form — about 40 pages each week with excerpts from the top stories of global media. Quite handy for those of us with web-induced short attention spans.

They have a web site here, but it is basically just for subscribing to the print publication. Costs about $50 annually; kinda pricey (I believe I got a freebie deal of some sort, which I guess is why it started showing up in our mailbox) but check it out if you’re into that sort o’ thing…

Anti-Semitism at San Francisco State University: Yourish is covering the hell out of this issue, and incidentally demonstrating that the line between weblogging and journalism is a rather fine, blurry one — if it can be said to exist at all.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen has an interesting take on Rules of Innovation with regards to new businesses and how they compete with incumbents.

Some of his advice is a bit banal (“Innovations fail when managers attempt to implement them within organizations that are incapable of succeeding. Managers can determine the innovation limits of their organizations quite precisely by asking three questions: (1) Do I have the resources to succeed?…”) but the main thrusts of the piece cross the border into the subtle realm of ideas that are obvious when you think about them — except you didn’t really think about them before.

Notably, Christensen starts by commenting on the evolution of process control and quality assurance: “The ‘Quality Movement’ of the 1980s and

George Lucas thinks using technology to create digital versions of film stars is a idea.

I think he’s simply trying to distract us from the fact that he’s already got the technology and has utilized it in his last two films … it’s the only rational explanation for the night-of-the-living-dead performances he’s gotten…

These Days: it seems “freaking” is the latest media shorthand for the latest teenage dance style to upset the old folks. Freaking, explains the Washington Post (via MSNBC), “makes the lambada look like the hokeypokey”. ( Self pity note: First I missed the free-love 60’s, now this. Damn….)

The story details the various efforts taken by flummoxed high school administrators to discourage said Forbidden Dance, including those at Stone Ridge High School, where “the deejay froze the freaking several times during a recent dance by playing the ‘Barney’ theme song.”

I’m pretty sure this is a violation of the Geneva Convention. Where’s UNCHR when you need it?

The Washington Post deeper into the “who knew what when” of pre-September 11th warnings. It’s not a pretty picture.

Nicholas Kristof has a piece summarizing the Clinton-era Arafat / Barak negotiations in the N.Y. Times today (registration required). His facts seem right to me — but the conclusion he draws from them is a bit squirrelly.

Kristof is backpeddling from his own previous columns in which he “sneered at Mr. Arafat and reiterated the common view that he had rejected very generous peace deals proffered by Ehud Barak.” He proceeds to walk through the peace offer put on the table by Barak and Clinton at Camp David and —more significantly — the more generous offers which followed.

But after detailing Arafat’s dithering and clear failure to grab the best deal ever offered (or, as has been widely been pointed out, offer a counterproposal), Kristol goes waffly and concludes:

“All in all, it is fair to fault Mr. Arafat for lacking the courage to strike a deal at Taba; for being a maddening, vacillating and passive negotiator; for condoning violence that unseated the best Israeli peace partner the Palestinians could have had. But the common view in the West that Mr. Arafat flatly rejected a reasonable peace deal, and that it is thus pointless to attempt a strategy of negotiation, is a myth.”

Hmmm. Lacks courage — check. Refused to accept last reasonable offer — check. “Maddening, vacilating, and passive negotiator” — check. Supports violence when negotiation doesn’t go to his liking — check.

What, exactly, would make Arafat a poor negotiating partner? I’d tend to agree that calling negotiation “pointless” is an overstatement — certainly at the very least from a cynical realpolitik perspective. But going into it with any illusions that Arafat is a rational partner in the process is simple stupidity.

Stick to those guns, Nick.

Oversimplifiedpundit?
Glenn over at is The Man, of course, and can be relied on for sound and sensible punditry on all subjects and at all hours. Even he, however, occasionally falls victim to the lure of oversimplification — specifically, the temptation to lump together groups of individuals, particularly when they’re doing something odious.

In Instapundit’s case, the target du jour is “the French”. Actually, they’ve been a favorite target of Instapundit and other blogs for quite a while. With synagogues burning across the country, it isn’t any wonder.

But precision in language is important, and it is that phrase —- “The French” — that’s the problem. I know Glenn knows that not all French are torching Jewish houses of worship, but that’s not the point. In this case, it is more or less harmless fun. But generalizations like this are dangerous — not for any of the usual PC notions that they are racist or any such (although sometimes they are), but simply because they get in the way of genuinely useful critical thinking about problems.

The worst example of this is when we talk about “The Palestinians” and “The Israelis”. All too much coverage makes it sounds like there are two sides to the current conflict. I count at least four: Israelis who want peace; Israelis who don’t; Palestinians who want peace, and Palestinians who don’t. And even that segmentation is a deceptive oversimplification, I suspect. When you think of “the two sides” as monolithic, the events of the last few years in Middle East make absolutely no sense — the two sides seem clearly to be acting irrationally and against their own interests. But when you slice down further — and avoid the easy turns of the phrase like “the Palestinians” — you get a clearer picture of reality, because in fact, each side is riddled with factions whose interests are not common.

Hence, the importance of precise language… or as “the French” would say, langue pr