The Guardian has another piece on Guantanamo. Five points off for using scare quotes and the term “death chamber.” Ten points granted, however, for quoting the British Foreign Office regarding their concern about the British citizens currently interred down there. Remember, while we won’t subject our own citizens to a military tribunal, we’ll do it to the citizens of our allies.
Author: Bryant
Heartworm is a funny one-panel Web comic. And I mean it’s both funny and well-drawn; we’re not talking the usual Web comic fodder. (And by “the usual Web comic fodder,” I explicitly don’t mean Joey Manley’s sites, but let’s face it — Sturgeon’s Law applies to Keenspace. In spades.)
Six comics, go read ‘em, it won’t take but a moment.
A while back, Julian Dibbell wrote one of those articles about MMORPG economies. You know the kind, all breathless and interested. He’s the guy who wrote that article on LambdaMOO, too. I don’t know if we owe him a debt of thanks for that or not.
In the interests of putting his, well, money where his mouth is, he’s now keeping a blog (via Kottke) chronicling his attempts to make money in UO. Solid stuff, particularly his reporting on the recent UO “gold farm” scandal. Read it from the beginning.
WISH 50 is all about being a professional in the game business:
Have you ever considered trying to publish something professionally in the gaming industry? Why or why not? What are the good points and bad points of being in the industry?
We’re presumably talking about pen and paper here, rather than computer games. With that in mind, the answer is yep. I have, in fact, published something professionally in the gaming industry. I have a decent-sized handful of White Wolf credits, most happily in the Trinity line; I’ve also done work for Atlas and I have something in the queue for Eden.
However, my drive to freelance tailed off a little once I’d done some of it. It doesn’t pay well, so money’s not a strong motivator, and now that I know I can do it I don’t feel the urge to prove it again. This leaves the pleasure of doing work I care about as an incentive.
I don’t get as much pleasure out of working in someone else’s vinyard. This isn’t a financial issue, it’s a creative control issue. One of the reasons I enjoyed working on Trinity so much was because my editor gave me lots of room to lay down tracks. When I wrote Psi Law, I was defining certain elements of the Trinity universe all by my lonesome. That was fun; sharecropping, not as much fun.
If I ever discover myself rich, I expect to get into the publishing business. I think there’s a place in gaming for the small press concept — games published for artistic motives. I don’t want to publish extended lines with a GM screen and splatbooks, I want to publish interesting one-offs with high production values that are complete in one book. That will, alas, probably always remain a dream.
Tipped off via the intrepid kodi, we have more on the Guantanamo plans for an execution chamber.
There also are plans to build a permanent modular detention facility, to imprison detainees who might be sentenced to indefinite terms, and an execution chamber should any be sentenced to death, he said.
If this is accurate, and the article quotes named individuals in the military, they have at the very least developed a process and procedure for military tribunal executions. And, in fact, it’s been posted.
Any lawful punishment or condition of punishment is authorized, including death, so long as the prerequisites detailed in reference (a) are met.
The above-mentioned reference (a) is the Military Commission Order No. 1, which is available here (as a PDF). It refers back to this Presidential order for authority. It should be noted that these tribunals are limited to non-US citizens, although it includes citizens of some of our allies.
Lawrence Haws argued in comments below that these plans could be intended as a threat to induce cooperation. S’still possible. I hope he’s right.
I should also note that, on reviewing the orders referenced above, that the military has outlined a fair system of trials. Without spending more time thinking about it, I wouldn’t argue that the tribunal system itself is unfair. I am more concerned about a judicial system established by executive order, for reasons involving separation of powers. (There’s probably something to be said here about the system of military justice for our military personnel; I will summarize by observing that becoming subject to that system is a matter of personal choice.)
Daily Kos, who is among the top five liberal bloggers, got a gig working for Howard Dean as a political consultant. From his disclosure post, his focus is going to be on providing services for the Internet campaign.
Now, “rah rah bloggers affecting politics rah.” Take that as said. And, yeah, it’s interesting that Dean chose a blogger to manage his online community. But I think it’s more interesting contemplating the fact that Dean cares about his online community at all. Blogs are part of that. So are the Dean Meetups, which have touched far more people than the Dean weblog. (Note that the Meetups translate into real world action in the form of charity work.)
He’s certainly polling higher, so something’s working. I think his core messages are fairly powerful, and he’s found a good way to broadcast those messages. The next step is convincing his Internet constituency to amplify those messages and talk about them to people who could care less about the Internet. If he can make that happen, he’s got a pretty solid chance of winning the nomination.
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.
Despite the constant attempts to play down the looting of the Iraqi National Museum, the full story is coming out. It is fairly clear, at this point, that a whole bunch of items were missing. It’s also pretty clear that many of them were simply hidden for safekeeping.
The lesson? We owe the Iraqis a debt of thanks for preserving the heritage of Iraq, since we were too busy to do so.
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.
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.