Author: N.Z. Bear

War of the Memes Goes Mainstream

Glenn to David Brooks’ observation that the 9/11 report makes a clear statement about what we are actually fighting:
We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb. Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts to their cause.
It seems like a small distinction – emphasizing ideology instead of terror – but it makes all the difference, because if you don’t define your problem correctly, you can’t contemplate a strategy for victory. . . .
As I reminded Glenn (and he kindly linked to), I addressed very similar themes in my post The War of the Memes, way back in 2002. In my opinion, it is probably the best piece of blog writing I’ve done to date (for whatever that’s worth), so I’ll take any excuse to refer folks back to it. Take a look; if you find it worthless, you probably shouldn’t bother coming back around these parts, because I’m unlikely to get much better than that… 🙂
-NZB

Convention Blogging Resources – II

At the moment, I’m pretty convinced that better coders than I have quite adequately provided the kind of convention portal sites that I was considering hacking together. I might still toss something up if I see a gap (suggestions welcome), but for the moment, I’ll be watching the following:
Dave Winer’s which presents the latest posts from convention bloggers, and also has a combined XML feed for the more feed-inclined. (Only downside: I think any bloggers who don’t have an XML feed won’t show up here; though I don’t know if there actually are any). Dave also has a page with just images, although as he warns, “There are already some nipples visible in the flow. If you’re under 18, please avert your eyes. ” — i.e., may not always be safe for work depending on what bloggers choose to toss up.
Feedster’s politics page, now showing “The Latest in Today’s Politics from the Official DNC Bloggers.”
Cyberjournalist.net has the most exhaustive list I’ve seen of both the credentialed bloggers, and other bloggers who were either disinvited or are attending in other capacities.
And the aforementioned Technorati Politics Page — still yet to be unveiled!

Convention Blogging Resources

Folks:
I’m looking to find out if:
a) Anyone has collected a full list of bloggers going to the convention next week
b) Anyone is planning on providing a resource page to link to the work of those bloggers.
I see the Dave Sifray and the Technorati crew are now up with CNN and planning a politics page, but they haven’t released it yet so I’m not sure precisely what it will contain.
And yes, I’m considering what I might be able to do to provide such a portal, if nobody else is stepping up to the plate. Feedback is welcome as to whether this would be useful.
Thanks all!

Oh, did I forget to mention I’m under criminal investigation?

So help me think through this. Sandy Berger has been investigation since October of last year, and it appears he knew about it. He’s acting as an advisor to the Kerry campaign. Choose the option that most likely describes reality:
A) Berger told the Kerry campaign he was under investigation, and the campaign saw no reason to worry about it and distance Kerry from Berger. Conclusion: the Kerry campaign is run by idiots.
B) Berger did not tell the Kerry campaign he was under investigation. Conclusion: Berger concealed vital political information from his party’s Presidential campaign. Corollary: Berger is not just careless with classified information, but is also an idiot.
There is more to this story, of course: I hardly know where to start with all the things that don’t make sense. But if anyone can see a scenario other than the two above that could possibly fit the facts, chime right in…

Who Watches The Watchers?

The LA Times’ Alex Jones disapprovingly at bloggers in what Stephen Green accurately describes as a hit piece yesterday, tut-tutting that simply because bloggers have credentials for the conventions, that doesn’t make them real live Journalists-with-a-capital-J.
Jones’ is right to be worried, but not for the reasons he expresses in his column. The convention coverage provided by bloggers will be significant and interesting not because it will reveal anything all that exciting about our political process. It will be interesting because it will reveal a great deal about our media process.
For the first time, we will have a large group of Pro-Fessional Journ-O-Lists and bloggers working the same event in close proximity. Sure, the blogger’s initial focus will be on the pols and their staged rituals and behind-the-scenes antics. But I predict that much of the most compelling coverage from our colleagues journeying to New York and Boston will come when they turn their attention to the parallel shadow dance that our press corps performs alongside the public, visible routines of the political operators. Want to know how that news sausage is made? You are about to find out.
They may not know it yet, but the bloggers aren’t there to cover the convention. They are there to cover the journalists. So my advice to Mr. Jones, and any other pro journalist out there venturing to the conventions: I suggest you put on your best suit. You are being watched.

Alliance Blogrolls Working Again

Believe it or not, I think I’ve finally implemented sufficient validation / cleanup code to restore all alliance blogrolls to working order. The biggest problem actually seemed to be some blogs which included carriage-returns in their titles, which messed up the Javascript code.
All blogrolls should now be working; if they aren’t, please comment here…

Democratic Convention: Capacity Problem? What Capacity Problem?

So the Democrats quite a bit of heat for “disinviting” some bloggers who had been told they would be credentialed for the convention. The Democrats claimed an oversight about the capacity available; Jeff Jarvis quotes today’s New York Times editorial on the subject which suggests about 20 bloggers were turned away.
Well, apparently they found a few more spots, because there are now five slots open and reserved for bloggers — or anyone else — who win a fundraising contest:
To celebrate the beginning of the Campaign for a New Majority and the launch of Majority Makers, we are giving away FIVE TRIPS TO THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION IN BOSTON!
That’s right, the top five “NetRoots” fundraisers on Majority Makers will receive a Convention package, including:
Round trip transportation to Boston;
Four nights accommodations in Boston;
Convention credentials; and,
An invitation to a very special convention event.
I guess we have to conclude that using those five slots to “un-dis-invite” 25% of the bloggers that were jerked around either didn’t occur to them, or was deemed not worth the effort.
I received the heads-up on this campaign via a DCCC email titled “Got credentials?”, which read:
This program strikes us a perfect fit for the blogosphere, which knows well that George W. Bush couldn

Alliance blogroll code

Folks: I know some of you have had problems with the alliance blogroll code lately. I’m somewhat stumped as to what the problem is. That code hasn’t changed in ages, and I haven’t updated anything lately. And, on some sites at least, it seems to be working.
There is a possibility that the problem is due to the fact that the whole site was down due to a domain name problem over the past few days; the fix may still be floating through the DNS servers. So please check back and see if it resolves itself over the next day or so… I’ll keep trying to figure it out on this end…
Update:: I know what the problem is. Remember (scroll down), I recently changed the Ecosystem to retrieve a blog’s name from the TITLE attribute. Well, at least one blog in the Blogdom of God has some funky HTML code embedded in their TITLE. Dunno which it is yet, don’t have time to check myself. But I’ll bet you a dollar that’s what is screwing up the blogroll results.
So: Track down your errant member and convince them to ditch that goofy HTML, and your blogrolls will work again!

A fine start

Congratulations to the team on this morning’s successful test flight!
Not quite in Mr. Harriman’s class yet, Mr. Rutan — but I have high hopes! Keep it up…

Ecosystem Cleanup II

Yet more Ecosystem cleanup today. I have completely changed the way the names of weblogs are identified now. Previously, the name was simply whatever was manually typed in when the weblog was registered.
Now, the Ecosystem is actually reading the TITLE attribute off the HTML of a weblog’s page, and using that for the name.
What this means is that there is now no need to submit requests for updates if you change the name of your weblog; just change the TITLE (as you probably were doing anyway) and it will be automatically reflected in the Ecosystem.
This is a first step in a new way of handling data updates by putting them directly in the hands of the weblog’s owner. In the near future, I plan to implement similar methods to handle deleting blogs from the Ecosystem entirely, and moving a blog from one URL to another. But for now, have fun with titles…

Spirit of America

I’m back from a rather hectic business period and — heaven forbid — a little mini-vacation time.
My task of the moment is digging out from underneath my real work, but while you are waiting for me to a) share pearls of bloggy wisdom or b) fix the damned Ecosystem, go visit of America and do something. Jim Hake and his crew are on a major push to expand their operations o’ benevolence, and they need your help.
More thoughts later, but for now you can enjoy Jeff’s on your way there…

Democrats: Bloggers Welcome!

Just got an email from the Democrats, stating that they will be issuing press credentials to bloggers for their in Boston:
The Democratic National Convention Committee is pleased to announce that for the first time ever, bloggers will be offered Convention access through the official media credentialing process.
Because the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston is less than 90 days away and space is extremely limited, we encourage those interested in this first-ever opportunity to act now. To apply to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention as a blogger, you will need to submit applications to both the Senate Periodical Press Gallery AND the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) Press Gallery before the May 28th deadline.
The instructions are a bit confusing though: as you can see, they say you must first apply to the Senate Periodical Press Gallery for credentials, but the way I read their requirements it seems like no “pure blogger” would qualify. But they then note that “Bloggers who do not receive convention credentials through the Congressional galleries can still apply to the Democratic National Convention Committee Press Gallery at http://www.dems2004.org/pressgallery.”
I’ve sent an email back asking for clarification on the process; will post an update if/when I receive it. But regardless of procedural complications, kudos to the Dems for opening up to the blogging crowd…
Update: The DNC is truly learning to operate on ‘net time: I already received a response to my query from Mike Liddell:
“As I understand it, the Senate press gallery requested that we send bloggers through them, in addition to our press gallery, even though bloggers don’t fall within their normal guidelines. I can confirm that if you give me a day or two.
The short story is that blogging is such a new medium that there isn’t a standard way to credential bloggers just yet. But we’re working to make it as streamlined as possible.”
I’ll update again if more info comes in.
P.S. – I also sent an email to the RNC convention contact email, asking if they are prepared to make the same offer to bloggers. Will let you know what they say!
P.P.S. – I’d better be careful with this asking-questions-and-writing-about-the-answers thing; somebody might accuse me of doing actual reporting.
Update 5/6: Initial response received from the RNC: “Good question, we shall check. Thank you for contacting the RNC.”
Stay tuned!
Update 5/6 (b) : How much would you pay for your favorite blogger to cover one or both conventions? It strikes me that this is an excellent opportunity for “pay-for-coverage” trips where a blogger solicits dollars from their readers in exchange for a pledge to use those funds to cover the convention. (And no, I’m not interested in actually going myself, so this isn’t about little old me). So if you’d be willing to fork out a little dinero to have one of your fave’s do the coverage: speak up! They might say yes…

Sympathy for the General

My favorite Anne Garrels is back in Iraq and this time, has chosen to seek out the most unfortunate Iraqis to interview; those most unfairly impacted by the war. Those who, through no fault of their own, now find themselves shut out of the post-war process.
Yes, I’m talking about The-High-Point-Was-Realizing- The-U.S.-Was-Screwing-Up Garrels, and it is that victimhood that defines them. Certainly not any of their, you know, actions…

Kerry and Color

Kerry is continuing to draw fire for the somewhat, er, pale complexion of his “inner circle”. The latest is a takedown from King at the Washington Post, who points out that the Kerry campaign is quite literally taking a divide-and-conquer approach to American ethnic groups, but still can’t seem to bring itself to let anybody into the management team with a skin color darker than well-tanned:
Let’s be fair, you might argue. Doesn’t Kerry have a right to surround himself with close friends and top assistants who click with him? Of course. But is it too much to expect that the Democratic Party’s top liberal, the candidate who cries that he has “fought for civil rights and equal opportunity for every American my whole life,” who brags about his efforts to “enhance diversity,” and whose message is inclusiveness, would in fact have a presidential campaign inner circle that is reflective of the diversity of his party and the country? And if elected, will Kerry govern that way?

Can Catholic Cardinals Cancel Kerry Communion?

Isn’t the Catholic Church Kerry a huge favor by starting to make noises that Catholic politicians who, like Kerry, support abortion rights are not fit to receive Communion?
Finally, an issue that even Kerry is unlikely to waffle on and can demonstrate Strong Moral Character in his steadfast — but respectful! — disagreement with his Church. He’s the new Andrew Sullivan, only liberal, and straight!
Let’s be serious; would anybody even remember Kerry actually is Catholic if the Church hadn’t reminded us? This is just the thing to convince the large swath of Church-going America that Kerry views his faith as something more than a line item on his resum

More on Citizen’s Media

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As various of us try to enable and encourage weblogs and citizens media — and I’m one of those — I also try to stay mindful that we can’t ‘mold it into our image of what we think it should be. It will be what it wants to be — that’s the whole point. Now if we can help it along that path (with technology or financial support or education or attention) great. But the beauty of citizens’ media is that it is what it wants to be, not what somebody else wants it to be.
And the “what it will be” is plural, not singular, which is the most important response to those who have met the idea of the Citizen’s Media Association with scorn.
Unlike traditional media like television where essentially, all TV programming has evolved into a single standard model, weblogs and other ‘net media don’t have to — and shouldn’t. The ideas being put forth for the CMA are part of one vision of what this medium can be — but there can, and should, be a wide spectrum of different approaches to weblogs going forward.
Like the idea of having a trade association to help you? Go the CMA route. Prefer to be an anonymous blogger just chipping in your $0.02 however you feel like it with no one else to tell you what to do? Do that. The different visions don’t really have to compete; they complement…