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. ...
The Dixie Chicks are still #1 on the country charts, but Home took a dive on the Amazon rankings lately. Wide Open Spaces and Fly both dropped back down from the dizzying sales heights generated by the controversy, but then trended back up again just as Home was diving. Meanwhile, Rolling Stone pointed out that there really wasn’t all that much boycotting, and Rosanne Cash is appalled. By the media, not by the Chicks. However, what everyone really wants to know: are they any good? Um… OK. Wide Open Spaces really was not anywhere near anything I want to hear, and while I’m not a country fan I did try and give it a fair shake. Lots of preprocessed strings, gloss, and so on. Nice close harmonies but man, if I want good close harmonies I can find ‘em someplace with some genuine feeling. ...
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 (original). 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.
3leaf is hiring (original). 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. ...
Speaking of privacy violations, Caltrans is expanding the use of Fastrak, their automatic toll collection system. They’re adding antennae along the highways, to collect realtime traffic info. This makes tracking individual drivers that much easier — another step down the slippery slope.
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.
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.
CafePress seems to be a mite closer to launching their book printing arm. I just got an intriguing email offering me the chance to beta it; alas, I don’t have a book all ready to go. C’est la vie. However, the email does have some hints about formats. They want page sizes of either 4.18 × 6.88 (mass market paperback), 5 × 8, 7.5 × 9.25, 8.5 × 11, or 6.625 × 10.25 (comic books). That’s inches, one assumes. They offer saddlestitch binding for lower page counts and wire-o for full fledged books. Maximum page count is 600 pages. ...
Den Beste (original) notes a $500 million drop in American tourism (original) over in France. Meanwhile, the ITA Office of Travel and Tourism notes a 7.6% drop (original) in visitors to the United States for Q1 2003. This follows a 8.3% drop (original) last year. Putting that into perspective, a little over 600,000 fewer people visited the US in the first quarter of 2003. If each of those people would have spent an arbitrary $1,000, which is probably low, then the US has lost over $600 million in one quarter. The article on France implies that their drop is $500 million total. Per capita, $500 million represents more for France than $600 million does for the US, of course. ...