March 19, 2003
Animated editorial cartooning
Matt Mirapaul, a longtime contract freelance writer for the New York Times' Arts section, has a new piece that went up the other day: Political Targets With Moving Parts. Matt asked for some suggestions tracking down sources for the article; the brilliant SF cartoonist Mark Fiore pointed him my way, after the column I wrote for OJR last year on animated cartooning. Funny how this stuff bubbles up to the elite media.
The war begins
Now that the invasion has begun, it's time to hope for a quick conflict with a minimum of casualties on both sides. Look for fewer postings here on the subject.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis will be julbilant at their new freedom, and we should be deeply moved by the coming displays of gratitude, but I'm afraid that doesn't excuse the precedent of invading another country to topple its leadership. (The president's claim that Americans' security was at risk is a contemptible charade that too many of us have bought into.)
I suspect we won't really know whether President Bush's gamble will pay off for a decade or more (will it invite the assassination of a future president? the planting of a dirty bomb in a major US city in a jihad retaliation?).
In the end, I second Dan's comments.
Turning to the Web for war news
USA Today: Iraq War could herald a new age of Web-based news coverage, says Merrill Brown of RealNetworks. Unfortunately, good ol' Merrill leaves weblogs out of the news equation.
Andrew Sullivan, conversely, argues that bloggers are seizing the moment as online political commentators.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointers.
In other Iraq-related war news, GOP lawmakers such as Rep. Cliff Stearns are asking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield why news organizations won't be subject to censorship in the Gulf.
That's right. The Republicans believe the truth will hurt the U.S. war effort.
Clear Channel: The pro-America corporation!
Chicago Tribune: Media giant's rally sponsorship raises questions.
It's not enough that Clear Channel owns more than half the radio stations in the entire country and has served up a aural stew of corporate, bland, incredibly brain-dead programming -- now it wants to stamp out all political dissent.
Buy a thong for freedom
Introducing The Total Information Awareness Gift Shop -- Buy a thong for freedom!
It began as a bit of a joke, a modest attempt at political satire spawned during an inane session of late night creativity. Then the New York Times ran a story about it.
Richard Gingras, the former Excite@Home exec, is the mastermind behind it all. I hope to run into Richard next week at the new media conference in Berkeley.
Here's the actual gift shop -- though I like the other url that takes you there: buyathongforfreedom. Kind of kitschy cool. I might buy one of these things. Um, a mug, not a thong.
Transcripts of DRM conference
The organizers of the DRM conference in Berkeley three weeks ago have posted audio, video, PowerPoint slide shows, a resources page, and transcripts of these two panels.
War blogging
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Kevin Sites, a CNN journalist who's photoblogging from Iraq. (And he's got an RSS feed to boot.)
Later: Blog discontinued by order of CNN.
BBC Reporters' Blog on Iraq war.
Forbes' Best War Blogs
CyberJournalist.net: War blogs from 'embedded' journalists
Jeff Jarvis' War in Iraq blog
Howard Owens' Inside VC War Blog
Christian Science Monitor: Assignment Kuwait (they're going to have to rename this page, pronto)
The Spokesman-Review: Conflict in Iraq (not a blog, but a landing page that points to blogs and other media coverage)
CyberJournalist.net has good war blog pointers
Cory Bergman's Lost Remote
Seattle Times: Tom Brown on the Conflict with Iraq
eCuaderno said:
Articles and warblogs listed at:
Warblogging en la guerra de Internet
Just one little kink
Larry Lessig tells that the representatives of the Kinks demanded a $10,000 fee from a book publisher for permission to reprint the line ìhelp me, help me, help, me sail awayî from the song ìSunny afternoon.î Amazin'. But not surprising. Which is supremely scary.
Google's strong growth curve
Fast Company: How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows. Story by Keith H. Hammonds, photographs by Timothy Archibald. Except there are no photos on the Web site. That's what happens when you slash your online staff to nothing.
Red alert? Close down the nation
Bridgewater, NJ, Courier-Post:
If the nation escalates to "red alert," which is the highest in the color-coded readiness against terror, you will be assumed by authorities to be the enemy if you so much as venture outside your home, the state's anti-terror czar says."This state is on top of it," said Sid Caspersen, New Jersey's director of the office of counter-terrorism.
Caspersen, a former FBI agent, was briefing reporters, alongside Gov. James
E. McGreevey, on Thursday, when for the first time he disclosed the realities of how a red alert would shut the state down.A red alert would also tear away virtually all personal freedoms to move about and associate.
"Red means all noncritical functions cease," Caspersen said. "Noncritical would be almost all businesses, except health-related."
Baffling Norton error message
Anyone out there familiar with the accursed Norton Systemworks package? Whenever I run Norton Disk Doctor, it does a fine job diagnosing the errors on my hard drive. But when I check the box to fix errors, it says it can't.
Instead, I get this error message.
And when I click on Schedule a Repair, nothing happens. (Oh, occasionally it will give me a dialogue box to schedule a repair upon rebooting, but when I reboot, the repair isn't done, and I get the same error message.) This little game has been going on for about 6 months now.
I don't know of any other apps on my computer that are running, preventing Norton from fixing my drive. Any ideas?
I'm on a Dell Dimension 8200 running Windows XP Professional (alas).
