Friday, February 20, 2004

Rex Hammock: "I just walked out of the Old Executive Office Building where four other 'real people' and I sat down for a 25-minute chat with the President of the United States."  

Washington Post: "The White House press corps yesterday scrambled to figure out why a hastily-arranged 'conversation' between President Bush and some regular Americans about the economy was suddenly closed to reporters -- and what went on behind those closed doors. Little did they know that behind those doors, one of the regular Americans whom Bush was meeting was a blogger."  

BBC: "The most compelling use of RSS is that it lets users read dozens of websites, all on the same page. The sites can be scanned in seconds rather than have to be laboriously loaded individually." 

Tentative announcement of BloggerCon on April 10. Please comment if there's a problem with the date. Experience has shown that people speak after it's set in stone when it's too late. If there's some reason we can't do it on April 10, please comment asap. 

MIT tech blog: "There are a couple of different ways the general public can sort through the 'raw' images returned by the rovers." 

There was a weather bomb in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. 

Russell Beattie: "Atom needs the simplest solution that could possibly work and not all this headache." 

Did Yankees owner George Steinbrenner fund ads to dislodge Howard Dean as the Democratic front-runner? 

At dinner I participated in a lively debate over the death penalty. There's little I enjoy more than discussing something that's important with a smart person who disagrees with me. We're planning another BloggerCon, btw, either April 3 or 10. If there's reason, like a major holiday or sporting event, that prevents us from doing either date, please let me know asap. It's going to be a one-day conference, free (as in no cost to attend, contributions are welcome, and we will solicit sponsorships). It'll be Day 2 style, multi-track, with a focus on blogging and politics, although we will repeat the most successful sessions from the last Con. We will discuss ways to disrupt the Echo Chamber. Believe it or not we came up with a killer idea along those lines last night. Nothing like premeditated creativity. The party will be on Saturday night, not Friday. Keep your fingers crossed it might actually be nice weather in Cambridge in early-mid April.  

I went to a seminar at the Kennedy School yesterday doing a postmortem on the Dean campaign. The discussion was led by a Chicago Sun-Times columnist and a political operative who ran a PAC that ran negative ads successfully against Dean in Iowa. He repeated that the only thing that mattered was winning. It didn't occur to me until this morning why that is wrong. Maybe it's true from the candidate's perspective, but it's not true from the voter's. What matters to the voter is getting representated. In the current political system that can't happen. Think about it this way. What if, in 2000, your main issue had been No Nation Building. Easy. Vote for Bush. What does he do his first week in office? Gets ready to do some nation-building. Did he know he would invade Iraq when he was running? You be the judge. In any case, as with most centralized businesses, the voters are a herd, not meant to be heard. At one point I leaned over to one of my colleagues and said "These guys are the enemy."