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Month: June 2003

The process is the map

This post is pretty old, but Dave Winer just linked back to it today and I picked up on something new; also, it ties in nicely to the recent discussion from the Dead Parrots, and if you aren’t reading the Parrots you ought to be. So, discussion ensues. Here’s the money quote from Dave:

OK, let’s deconstruct a myth. Someone says that weblogs aren’t journalism. OK, suppose a journalist has a weblog. When that journalist writes something on the weblog, therefore, it must not be journalism. Suppose the journalist writes exactly the same words on her weblog that she writes in a column in the newspaper she writes for. In one place it’s journalism and in the other it’s not? Hmmm.

Assuming we’re talking about a weblog with no editor, the answer is quite possibly yes. The logical fallacy is in the assumption that journalism is simply words. It’s not; it’s a process. It’s certainly possible to use that process in a weblog — c.f. Gizmodo, which is not precisely deep journalism but which qualifies nonetheless — but a weblog does not become journalism simply because it’s news-oriented.

Really, it’s about reputation capital. (Ob”Whuffie”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,889293,00.html.) “Journalism” is shorthand for “the reputation capital built up by generations of reporters and editors who have made the unwritten bargain to live up to the standards of those who have gone before them.” Independent journalism is hard because the journalists don’t have the reputation backup of an editor. Some succeed, and some don’t.

No more bitching

I think it’s about time to stop complaining that the media isn’t doing a good job of asking questions. In the end, the American public may or may not care about the WMD issue — although I hope they do — but it’s definitely out there. You can tell the media is covering the story when John Dean asks if lying about the reason for a war is an impeachable offense. He thinks it is, unsurprisingly. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports doubts about those two trailers.

Bookman's holiday

Those prone to suddenly gifting me with an all-expenses paid vacation in New York City should be aware of the Library Hotel. Their application of the Dewey Decimal System is slightly flawed, but only slightly. Map the thousandths digit in the room numbers to the tens digit in the DDS, and pretend that any floor number above 1000 subtracts 1000, and you’re close enough.

Besides. Books. I can forgive much, for books.

Bottlewasher needed

3leaf is hiring. I have no idea what they do, but their job listing is enough to make me wish I was a deep Windows geek.

13. Stealth plane are nice.  You give one orders, and it disappears.  When it reappears, it always says “Mission accomplished. I hit the target”, but sometimes it really hit Lichtenstein’s embassy.  You are NOT a stealth plane, you are a big, noisy, C130, that we can hear, see, and talk to for the whole project.

Hey, ally

Britain is now calling for the US to allow UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq. The poignant quote from Britain’s UN ambassador: “Even the closest ally cannot answer for the United States.”

They’re joined by the rest of the UN, of course. How much longer can we bear this undue influence in our affairs? Hasn’t Britain learned their lesson? Our friendship is not unconditional.

House of cards

Various and sundry Iraq news continues to flow. This is gonna be long.

On WMD: we still haven’t found anything, although Bush said we did. Alas, two trailers that might or might not be WMD factories are not in any way WMD. Sort of in the same way that styrofoam and gas aren’t napalm. On the other hand, various sources are reporting that intelligence analysts felt pressured to find evidence of WMD before the war. Similar reports are coming out of the UK.

Just to forestall one comment: yes, even if Saddam destroyed all his WMD years ago, he failed to accurately account for them. If you’re comfortable invading Iraq due to bad paperwork, more power to you.

Lots of arguments about what might have happened to Saddam’s theoretical arsenal. One popular argument: he gave ‘em to terrorists, in which case it would seem that we’ve at least temporarily increased the threat level. However, Bush tells us that’s not true, in a stirring speech: “But one thing is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime because the Iraqi regime is no more.” Or maybe he just forgot to say “besides the tons of chemical weapons I told you they had.”

Another current meme: we haven’t found Saddam, so why should we expect to have found WMD? This is an interesting turnaround from the hopeful noises Rumsfeld was making early in the war, when we were expected to believe Saddam was dead in a bunker. Also — and this is a subtle point, that many may have missed — Saddam is a single human being. Bush claimed that there were literally tons of chemical and biological weapons floating around. Saddam is independently mobile and rather small. Tons of chemical and biological weapons are not. I’m reliably informed that you need some sort of motorized device to move that kind of weight. I’m pretty sure you can’t actually extrapolate from one thing to the other.

Blix, God bless him, is still being the voice of sanity. “The lack of finds could be because the items were unilaterally destroyed by the Iraqi authorities or else because they were effectively concealed by them. I trust that in the new environment in Iraq, in which there is full access and cooperation, and in which knowledgeable witnesses should no longer be inhibited to reveal what they know, it should be possible to establish the truth we all want to know.” This is the closest anyone in the UN is coming to the Bush administration line.

Is that all the Iraq news? Heck no. There’s ongoing resistance in Falluja. This is in no way a surprising development, but it was not one that was widely accepted as a cost of the war by the war’s proponents. This surprise may explain the increasing delay in establishing an interim government.

Onward, ever onward. Turkey and the Kurds are not saber-rattling, and — it’s worth remembering this — Saddam is out of power. Which is a relief; don’t forget to read Salam Pax. That’s my good news for the day.

Unwired witchery

Cory Doctorow just posted an excerpt from an upcoming novel. “An urban fantast/magic-realist thing about community wireless networking.” It’s a fun read; kind of a Charles de Lint vibe filtered through the transfictionalist nerdcore point of view. Hm, or maybe vice versa. Definitely vice versa.

Imagine one of those Charles de Lint scenes where we get to know a somewhat fey stranger, except instead of all the folk music he’s into wireless networking. There you go.