Saturday, August 21, 2004

Blogging banned as Olympic sport. Doesn't the IOC have some seats to be selling in Athens, or at least some bribe money to tally up, instead of finding ways to make itself even less likable? "The International Olympic Committee is barring competitors, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other Web sites...The IOC's rationale for the restrictions is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists -- and that the interests of broadcast rightsholders and accredited media come first." 4:12:57 PM    comment []

In The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik reviews a crop of new books that challenge some of the conventional wisdom on WWI. It is not that wars are always wrong. It is that wars are always wars, good for destroying things that must be destroyed, as in 1864 or 1944, but useless for doing anything more, and no good at all for doing cultural work: saving the national honor, proving that we’re not a second-rate power, avenging old humiliations, demonstrating resolve, or any of the rest of the empty vocabulary of self-improvement through mutual slaughter. Kipling learned this, if the Kiplingites still haven’t. Niall Ferguson ends his recent neo-imperialist polemic “Colossus” with a mention of Kipling on the White Man’s Burden (which he rejects), and then a quote from Kipling on the fragility of empire (which he admires), but he leaves uncited the best poem Kipling ever wrote about war and its consequences, the simple couplet produced after his son was killed: If any question why we died Tell them, because our fathers lied. 2:27:55 PM    comment []

The American Democracy Project aims to get college students more educated about and involved in the political process. At Indiana University South Bend, the ADP project has created a website and blog. Here's Ken Smith, a professor at IUSB: "Why a web publication now? Students, librarians, and faculty are already doing much of this kind of work in their regular duties, and our ADP publication will capture that work for use by a wider audience...New software makes it possible to capture and publish good work quickly, providing a lively and thoughtful website, updated daily and serving any citizen with web access." 2:23:53 PM    comment []

Knight-Ridder: "Military records support Kerry's account of Vietnam service." Chicago Tribune (via Atrios): "The commander of a Navy swift boat who served alongside...Kerry during the Vietnam War stepped forward Saturday to dispute attacks challenging Kerry's integrity and war record." ...as links between the attack-ad crew and the Bush campaign are revealed. Ken Layne was right. This is going to blow up in Bush's face. 12:26:37 PM    comment []

This is a test post to see if my post will appear on the NC Blogs aggregator page (which continues to load skewed right on all my computers)...if it does work, I don't know how to automate this function, so that I don't have to type in the NC Blogs address every single time...isn't this a job for RSS? 12:12:45 PM    comment []

N&R reporter Mark Binker has launched a personal weblog... ...maybe he'll come to the conference. His colleague Mark Toczak will be there. I hope Matt Williams, who wrote last week's front-page article on local weblogs and then decamped for vacation, will make it, too...along with any other reporters, editors, designers, etc. with a personal or professional interest in blogging. 10:20:42 AM    comment []

Some suggested reading in anticipation of the weblog conference, and probably useful for any blogger: an interview from last fall with law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh about the legal status of weblogs and writers. 10:03:01 AM    comment []