licentious radio

Wednesday, April 17, 2002
[4:04:37 PM]

Today is when Israel celebrates independence... the stealing of the country from it's native residents, and the mass terror chosen by Israel's leaders as the strategy to force the natives to run for their lives.

From the beginning, Israel has been a rogue state: defying the United Nations and the Geneva Convention, eventually setting up a system that is at least hard to distinguish from apartheid.

Now, I'm not going to say Israel should give the country back, any more than I would say the United States should give the country back to our natives, but it's long past time to come to terms.

For all the violence, it looks like you could snap your fingers and have lasting piece: accept the Saudi plan. Peace has worked with Jordan and Egypt. When Arab states end their support for terrorism against Israel, that should be the end of most of it. If that's not enough, Israel can build a big wall, like they have around Gaza.

The silliness about 'terrorism' should stop. Israel is an intransigent regional superpower that started in terrorism, and has used state terror ever since. Sharon himself has been at the center of most of it. Terrorism by Palestinians is *vastly* less deplorable than state terrorism by the Israeli oppressors/nation-stealers.

If the Israelis aren't going to kill all the Palestinians (the United States' strategy with our natives), they may as well give up on taking over the West Bank and make peace.

Stephen Zunes in the San Jose Mercury News: The legal high ground: Palestinians have a strong case, though Americans have a hard time seeing it.

"For example, the Fourth Geneva Convention -- a legally binding international treaty -- forbids any country from transferring any part of its civilian population onto lands seized by military force. This makes every Israeli settlement outside of Israel's internationally recognized pre-1967 borders illegal. This was confirmed in U.N. Security Council resolutions 446 and 465, both adopted unanimously, which declared that Israel must withdraw all of its settlers."

[12:38:37 PM]
Have you looked at: http://catalogs.google.com/

They scan paper catalogs -- lots of them -- and put them online. You navigate through bitmap scans of catalog pages, and zoom in a couple of time to get to the point where you can read the text.

It seems freaky to me that a web search engine would do this. Maybe I should be pleased, as it brings paper content into the digital world.

Are they going to scan magazines and books next?

[11:23:42 AM]
Funniest quote of the month: Condaleeza Rice demanding the victim of her failed coup d'etat should "respect democratic processes". Who needs joke writers when you have the Bush mafia?

[11:14:28 AM]
Salon.com: <quote>"Whereas Gore regarded the battle as primarily legal, Clinton saw it as political -- and fierce," writes Toobin. "Gore wanted no demonstrators in the streets; Clinton wanted lots of them. Gore worried about pressing his case in court; Clinton thought the vice president should have sued everybody over everything. Gore believed in muting racial animosities about the election; Clinton thought that Democrats should have been screaming about the treatment of black voters. Gore believed in offering concessions, making gestures of good faith; Clinton thought the Republicans should be given nothing at all but should rather be fought for every single vote. 'He got more votes -- more people wanted to vote for him. This is the essence of democracy. But the fix is in. This thing stinks.'"</quote>

Gore shouldn't be treated as a favored candidate, and shouldn't be treated as an equal candidate. He should be treated as a known failure -- due to personal arrogance and outrageously bad judgement for which the whole world is paying the price.

He could, in fact, redeem himself, but the odds are slim. Silly talk about "shoulder to shoulder" with the usurper about creating world-wide wars and destroying civil liberties here... that's more loser talk. If he can't do better than that, he should get out of the way now.

[10:50:21 AM]
Regarding Google and weblogs....

I'm not the only person with this concern: The Bloggle Problem.

As far as I know, XML namespaces allow you to embed tags from one XML DTD in a document based on a different DTD. So you could have xml tags that indicate weblog structure, embedded in the html of the weblog.

I presume that Radio's xml syndication stuff either would work, or be a good start, but it should be very easy. Unless you define stylesheet attributes for them, the browser would completely ignore the extra xml tags.

The example below probably doesn't have enough hierarchy to suit xml gurus, but even they couldn't make it much more complicated. I've also left out the DTD and namespace declarations, mostly because I don't remember exactly how they work.

<wlml>
...
<wlml:item>
<wlml:permalink url="http://..." />
<wlml:heading>
<h4>Weblog item heading</h4>
</wlml:heading>
<wlml:body>
<p>The text of the item here.</p>
<p><a href="http://...">permalink</a></p>
</wlml:body>
</wlml:item>
...
</wlml>

The DTD would look a little like the following, though I'd expect this isn't quite right:

<!ELEMENT wlml (item*)>
<!ELEMENT item (permalink, heading?, body)>
<!ELEMENT permalink (#PCDATA)>
<!ATTLIST permalink
    url CDATA #REQUIRED>
<!ELEMENT heading (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT body (#PCDATA)>

If somebody fixed this up and Google decided to use it, it would take less than a week for the blogerati to have most of the blog world hooked in. Blogtech spreads faster than a plague. (Yes, I'm kidding.)

[10:17:43 AM]
Should have taken French.... I thought "coup d'etat" implied use of military force. At least the definitions at dictionary.com don't support that: "The sudden overthrow of a government by a usually small group of persons in or previously in positions of authority." "Etat" is French for state, not military.

In other words, the Supreme Court can serve in a coup d'etat, just as easily as a bunch of Venezuelan generals.