Scripting News

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 14:43:14 GMT

A personal note. It's been 300 days since I smoked. I still want one from time to time. But I don't do it.

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 13:39:28 GMT

Motley Fool: Google in the Crosshairs. "When you're so good at what you do that your brand becomes a verb, the competition starts to notice, big time."

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 13:45:42 GMT

Jon Udell spots the PR industry discovering "RSS". This gives me goosebumps, big time.

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 13:57:29 GMT

Reminder: Every Thursday we have meetings for weblog-writers at 7PM at Berkman Center, 1587 Mass Ave. If you are a reader of Scripting News, or a member of the Harvard community, you are welcome at these meetings. We want to bring weblogs into Berkman, and vice versa.

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 11:57:37 GMT

An editorial on this moment in time.

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 11:52:12 GMT

Gavin Sheridan posts gruesome pictures of war death.

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 13:53:18 GMT

Doc Searls comments and links on the war.

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 11:28:34 GMT

BBC: "French President Jacques Chirac welcomed the crumbling of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government."

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 08:57:25 GMT

BBC: Concorde grounded for good.

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 08:20:59 GMT

Thanks to Jenny Levine for the pointer to Haiko Hebig's directory of RSS aggregators.

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 08:47:39 GMT

On this day last year we announced our syndication deal with the NY Times.

This morning warmth and sunshine in Cambridge. Happy!

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 08:23:23 GMT

News.Com: "The ACLU on Wednesday lost its first attempt to challenge a controversial 1998 copyright law."

Editorial

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 11:34:16 GMT

Like people who favor the death penalty, the war proponents must have a sense of closure, except not so nice because so many more people have died, including our brothers and sisters, sons and daugthers.

MSNBC proclaims Bush a visionary, makes me wonder how this war is changing my country. What vision does it require to start a war? Have we lost our minds?

Eventually discussion will come back to what this war is about. As Rumsfeld says -- it's not over; and we haven't been told what the war was about, because it surely wasn't about Weapons of Mass Destruction (where are they?), and we don't believe our government cares about freedom for Iraqis, because if they did, we'd be at war with China, among many other countries. Our track record for follow-through is abysmal, ask Afghanistan or Pakistan. Our troops will be withdrawn quickly, and what's left behind may be worse than Iraq under Saddam much as the artificial nation of Yugoslavia fell apart when Tito died.

Chirac is a politician, so he must back-pedal now. The French made it personal, I heard an interview with a French official who sneered that Americans didn't understand the world. I hated that. That breeds a dangerous feeling inside the US, where we have to worry what comes next. The only way forward is to keep our heads on straight and think, not resort to emotional arguments.

I've gotten emails requesting an explanation of my thinking in the early days of the war, but I believe it requires no further explanation. Like all weblog posts they belong in the context of the time they were created. Further, don't be sure you know how it turns out. All we saw yesterday was a TV show. It's hard not to be influenced by it, I know. But I'm reading and listening for facts, and that's what I will form my opinion about as we go forward.