Category: Miscellany

Bloggers: The Musical

For no apparent reason, I hearby open nominations for the Bloggers: The Musical. Pick a blogger, find that perfect theme song that just sums ’em all up, and it my way. Yet another running list. Here’s a few to start:

Glenn “InstaMan” Reynolds – I Have The Touch (Peter Gabriel)

Asparagirl – I’m Just a Girl ( No Doubt )

Amish Tech Support – I’m Going Slightly Mad (Queen)

Richard Bennett – Mr. Roboto (Styx)

The Corner – Bloody Well Right ( Supertramp ) Runner Up: Everybody Wants to Rule the World
(Tears for Fears)

Tapped – Left of Center (Suzanne Vega)

Kausfiles (independent)- Mickey (Toni Basil)
Kausfiles (Slate absorbed) – Welcome to the Machine (Pink Floyd) Runner up: Take the Money and Run (Steve Miller Band)

Ken Layne – Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pink Floyd)

Andrew Sullivan – I’m Too Sexy (Right Said Fred)

Okay, despite the risk of furthering the linkin’ love fest between myself and the infamous Amish Tech Support today, you really should go read his ” Herrings, A Play in No Acts“, because it is really damned funny…

Tossed off line of the day from Sullivan’s Non-Permalinkable-But-He’ll-Have-His-People-Fix-That-Real-Soon May 24th Entry:

THE RAINES DOCTRINE: “We respect our readers’ right to express their opinion.” – Howell Raines, New York Times. Just not his writers’.

Intriguing, Captain, as the guy with the pointy ears was fond of saying. After a week or so of relative quiet in the Sullivan – Raines grudgematch, Sullivan just happens ( randomly, you see, just had to fill the mandatory space for the column (whoops I mean blog) for the day) — to toss in an offhand reference.

I still think he’s running a little new media experiment on Mr. Raines, personally.

But then again, I’m also becoming more open to the idea that maybe he really is just out to make Raines look like a jackass.

From the print edition of Week (typed in with my own hands, because those Luddites don’t have their content on the web):

Pierced teens take more risks

Body piercing is more than a superficial fad. Research conducted at the University of Rochester Medical Center, in upstate New York, found that girls who are pierced are more than twice as likely as nonpierced girls to smoke, have sex, and skip school. They are more than three times as likely to be involved in shoplifting and scrawling graffiti, and to have friends who use drugs and alcohol. “Piercing is one way that teenagers paint a picture of how they choose to present themselves to the world,” says pediatrician Timothy Roberts. He recommends that doctors use this information to spend more time talking with pierced patients about smoking and sexual behavior.

TTLB recommends that high school boys use this information in determining who to ask out tonight.

With regard to my blatant plea for continued linkage, Tech Support castigates me (rightly) for

“…insipid, narcissistic whining and an abject disregard for the fundamental principles of Bloggerly decency. N.Z. Bear (what the hell is up with that name, anyway?) is demonstrating clearly his status as a bottom-feeding ingrate whose overwrought prose would cause Daniel Steele to choke, and whose pathetic flash-in-the-plan weblog will soon suffer the inevitable decline which it so richly deserves. ‘TTLB’, as ‘The Bear’ so cloyingly refers to his site, will soon be remembered as one in a piece with Kozmo, Webvan, and that dog food store with the sock puppet as Internet ventures doomed to failure by their inherent mediocrity, without which the world is an infinitely better place. Phooey on him!”

I paraphrase, a bit. Actually, he didn’t say that. But he probably should have. And I’ll bet he was thinking it.

Check out what he really said here.

PS – What’s this “singles stretched to doubles and triples” shit? Whadaya trying to say there Larry? You want a piece of me???

am now in posession of both Vanilla Sky and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on DVD.

And I haven’t even watched my tape of the Buffy finale yet.

I am a very happy geek.

PS – Anyone caught e-mailing me Buffy spoilers will be strapped to a chair with eyes propped open Clockwork Orange style and forced to watch all 100 episodes of 7th Heaven straight through with breaks allowed only for bathroom trips, during which time Celine Dion’s A New Day Has Come will be played at full, chirpy volume as you conduct your required business. (I’ve got potentially infinite copies of Celine, now, remember…)

Getting no linkin’ love today. I definitely got a little punchdrunk on the hits of Instapower and Kauspower over the past week. But now, alas, traffic has dropped down to more sane levels. But I note many folks dropping by with no referrals — does that mean, heavens to Betsy, that people are actually coming back after having been here once?

Geez, you’d think you would learn.

So what does a guy have to do around here to get some linkage, man? We’ve got it all here at TTLB. We’ve got a serious project to improve the security of our nation. We’ve got pretentious, pseudo-literary musings on the BBS society of the ’80s. We’ve got concise, to the point referrals to pretty pictures, and historical comparisons between World War II and the War On Terror.

Heck, now I’m even throwing in the obligatory snarky comments about Richard Bennett and Andrew Sullivan, and I can’t even get them to throw a “this guy’s an asshole” link my way.

My fianc

The Truth Laid Bear: Violating Federal Law for Fun and … well, for Fun.

article from Newsforge (found via Metafilter) points out a little fact that everybody should have noticed earlier (including me): that anyone who ran the story about how to defeat Sony’s CD copy protection may be in violation of the dreaded Digital Millennium Copyright Act (cue ominous organ music).

But wait! Looks like TTLB may get off the hook, ’cause Newsforge is kind enough to include the following text of the bill:

“Any person who violates section 1201 or 1202 willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain … shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense …”

Aha! I can safely say that their ain’t no “commercial advantage” or “financial gain” going down here at TTLB. I’m still waiting for Mickey to give me a ride on the Boeing, let alone raking in any of the mega-shekels Andy might be seeing.

But I’ll keep you posted — I may just have to throw up one of those Amazon donation widgets for my legal defense fund…

A few days back, The Connection, a public radio program out of WBUR in Boston, had a good discussion on preventing terrorism and the many actual and potential investigations going on post-9/11. It’s in streaming RealAudio from their website.

There was the obligatory idiot or two calling in to explain calmly that everything would be Just Fine if Americans would stop being such nasty hegemonic bastards, enlightening us with such gems as “typical American behavior is rabidly anti-anybody who’s not American.” But if you can tune out those interludes host Dick Gordon and guests Elaine Shannon (Washington correspondent for Time Magazine) and Juliette Kayyem (Executive Director of the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness at Harvard JFK School of Government) provide some interesting background and info on the Congressional investigations going on into 9/11 and the overall problem of preventing future attacks.

Kayyem, who served on the National Commission on Terrorism in 2000, in particular had a few interesting things to say, notably regarding the reaction that commmission’s report (also known as the Bremer report) met with when it was released in June 2000:

It was worse than being ignored, what happened to us. We recommended in that commission — bypartisan, independent, ten member — we recommended a lot of the structural fixes you’re hearing about now. We recommended more focus by the CIA on human intelligence, more analysis by the FBI, other things.

To say we got reamed in the press would be an understatement. We were villified in that summer when the report came out as being paranoid… all these cold warriors (which a lot of the guys on the commission were) trying to get money from the cold war focused, now, to the Defense Department for terrorism. So I think that there was just a basic unwillingness to accept the reality that most people within counterterrorism knew… which was the terrorists were getting smarter, better, and bigger. And I think we all are to blame for that in some way — the media, the government, everything.”

Is Kayyem exaggerating the reaction to the commission’s report? My (brief) research turned up one example that suggests not: This piece by Salon’s Bruce Shapiro, circa June 2000, which has the wince-inducing subhead of “Why a new report on the threat of international terrorist attacks on U.S. soil is a con job.”

Was the Bremer commission prophetic? Don’t know yet, as I haven’t been able to find a copy of the report (if it is publicly available). But I can point you to this transcript of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on the matter from June 15, 2000. (I was annoyingly unable to find this on an official .gov site; so strangely, it’s from “indiatogether.org”. Hopefully it’s accurate).

More to come on this later, after I actually slog through the transcript…

Incidentally, The Connection is generally a good spot to get general roundups on the issues of the day, if you are, like me, addicted to streaming audio programs over the ‘net. (I find I can’t clean the house without them anymore, particularly now that I’ve got my little wireless speaker that I can bring all around with me). Other favorites of mine are Forum, from KQED in San Francisco, To The Point, from KCRW in Southern California, and of course national programs like Talk of the Nation. (And yes, Fresh Air with Terry Gross can be fascinating as well, depending on the guest & topic).

All of these programs have RealAudio streaming setup via the web, which works beautifully if you’ve got DSL / Cable, and even was listenable for me back when I was at 56K. Give them a whirl.

Did you know that the use of mercenaries is by a U.N. convention? I didn’t.

And apparently a group of wizened old folks (meeting in Geneva, natch) is recommending further restrictions. Although I must admit, the UN release provides next to zero information about what they’re actually recommending.

But the more I look into this, the more confused I get. Does the UN think mercenaries are good or bad? Are they “legal” or “illegal” under international law? And if they are “illegal’, how come Sandline and Executive Outcomes have such spiffy web sites? (You can even make the clock on EO’s site count in military time. Cool!)

Little help, anyone?

Update: I take back the “spiffy” comment about EO’s website; lots of it don’t seem to work.

Should I be worried about ?

Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I’m getting flashbacks to 1945. Isn’t it a little odd that the conference is being “convened jointly by Tahmasb Mazaheri, Economy and Finance Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown”? Given that the reconstruction of Afghanistan is the objective, wouldn’t one expect to see an Afghan official at the head table?

Mussharif: Mohammad, my good friend, I insist that you take Farah.

Khatami: No, no, Pervez, your generosity with regards to Herat is more than sufficient. We would, however, be interested in discussing Ghowr…

I had no intention of jumping on the bandwagon, but I just reread his page and one entry struck me as just too damned stupid not to comment on.

From his May 23rd entry:.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS: In today’s climate in France that the burning down of the Israeli embassy was the result of an accident? About as likely as president Chirac’s suggestion that there are no anti-Semites in France.

Maybe somebody burned down the embassy on purpose. Maybe it was an accident. I don’t know. And neither does Sullivan. So with no facts at all (unless he’s got some and didn’t choose to share them with his readers), Sullivan flings out wild speculation and calls it punditry.

Yeah, I know, that’s redundant.

This is not helpful.

There are anti-Semites in France. If Chirac doesn’t think so, he’s an idiot. But for Sullivan to leap to judgment on something like this — for reasons that look suspiciously like the urge to toss off a snarky, catchy remark for the blog — just lends credence to the fools who want to call those who oppose genuine anti-Semitism conspiracy nuts.

And so next time there is a real incident that isn’t quite clear, that is in that grey area where the facts are coming to light but not yet crystalized… that next time, all the rational voices that try to convince the world that yes, there is a problem here will have just a tiny little bit less credibility.

But it made a stylin’ blog entry. Thanks Andrew.

Feeling like you’re not pulling your weight? Want to give something back? Well head on over to the project!

ECHELON@home is a distributed intelligence gathering system that harnesses the power of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers in the search for terrorists, hackers, drug czars, foreign military operations, and general ne’er-do-wells.. You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes international and domestic emails, internet traffic, phone calls, cell phone calls, satellite communications, and more. There’s a small but captivating possibility that your computer will detect a crime and allow the NSA to report it.

(it would be a bit cooler if they at least managed to get nsa.org, but if you try there, you’ll find something equally strange.)

Richard Bennett ugly on Virginia Postrel for elitist tendencies:

She’s always struck me as a snob, mainly because of her practice of separating links to “pro” journalists from “merely amateur” bloggers. In the Blogosphere, nobody knows you’re a celebrity, Virginia, we only care about the content of your content.

If Bennett finds Postrel

Go this. And hope that he’s wrong. About some of it… about any of it.

If you figure out a way to convince me that he’s wrong, please, by all that is not holy, explain it to me.

(his archive isn’t working, so I’m referring to the “scary thought for the day”. Found via Instapundit, so not sure why I’m bothering. )

In defense of Ing

Mike Gannis writes:

I must forcefully disagree with your reader Mark Goble for criticizing the inclusion of Dean Ing on your Dream Team list. Ing has actually written a pretty good novel about how to deal with terrorists in the U.S. — “Soft Targets,” which also appeared as a novella in Jim Baen’s bookazine “New Destinies” in 1980 or thereabouts. IIRC, he was quite prescient and had a couple of good solutions to the problem of domestic terrorism. It’s been reissued, and seems to be still in print as a paperback — see link] for more info.

As I’ve indicated, I’m agnostic on Ing, having not read the fellow, but always glad to hear differing opinions…

More from the Dream Team

Benford (whose web site you can find here) responded to my e-mail regarding the Dream Team with the following note:

Good idea. Not really my area of expertise, but the most relevant story that applies is my “A Calculus of Desperation”, published about a decade ago, about a sophisticated form of bio warfare. It was reprinted by a Washington think tank and used in a conference on bio threats etc…

Okay, this is funny:

The London yoga center Triyoga came under strenuous neighborhood protest in March over the increasing noise level at its relaxation institute, according to a Reuters report; mellow music played at high volume, clients’ chanting, and group-breathing exercises (guttural sounds) were named as the major nuisances.

(From MSNBC.com’s of The Weird).

When did Onion stop being funny?

I headed over there in search of something amusing (the page is taking itself a bit too seriously today) and made it through their whole front with nary a chuckle. I think my mouth twitched once or twice in a near-smile, but that was about it.

I haven’t checked them out in a while, so I must have missed the steep decline. Come on, people, isn’t there somebody out there who’s in charge of telling me these things?