Tuesday, October 19, 2004

A conversation between Kurt Vonnegut and Kilgore Trout (link via the must-read Greensboro blog Backwards City). 2:20:21 PM    comment []

The News & Record has a new blog, The Chalkboard, dedicated to local education issues. 2:11:22 PM    comment []

NYT: "In the debate over the war and its aftermath, the Bush administration has portrayed the insurgency that is still roiling Iraq today as an unfortunate, and unavoidable, accident of history, an enemy that emerged only after melting away during the rapid American advance toward Baghdad. The sole mistake Mr. Bush has acknowledged in the war is in not foreseeing what he termed that 'catastrophic success.' But many military officers and civilian officials who served in Iraq in the spring and summer of 2003 say the administration's miscalculations cost the United States valuable momentum - and enabled an insurgency that was in its early phases to intensify and spread." One of the things this election should be about is competence. Instapundit keeps saying Kerry ain't the guy to run a war on terror. But could Kerry really do a worse job than the incumbent? Read the whole, sad story. 2:07:21 PM    comment []

Today would have been my grandfather Cone's 100th birthday. I loved that man. He was one of my best friends and strongest influences. And he was a lot of fun. Someday I should write down the stories he told me: Drinking bootleg liquor the night his Hopkins lacrosse team beat Navy, the time Aunt Claribel lost the check for a Cezanne, an armed confrontation with union organizers during the Depression... Not long ago my brother-in-law joked that as I age I'm turning into big Sydney. Nicest thing anyone's said to me in a long time. Happy birthday, Grandaddy. 1:57:41 PM    comment []

Tons of comments and big-name bloggers battling around this Jeff Jarvis post on the Jon Stewart/Tucker Carlson smackdown...but I thought the most interesting point was about CNN's clueless web strategy. Jarvis notes that hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded the video clip...from sites other than CNN.com. "This was a flood of viral distribution that came from viral promotion. Welcome to the future of TV...you don't need to worry about watching it live -- live is so yesterday -- because thousands of peers will be keeping an eye out for you to let you know what you should watch (we call that metadata now) and they'll record it and distribute it. The really stupid thing is that CNN didn't do this themselves: Hey, we had a red-hot segment with tsunami star Jon Stewart strangling our guys with a bow tie; you should watch; here, please, look at this free download because it will promote our bow-tie boy and our brand and our show and give us a little of that Stewart hip heat. That's what CNN should have done. Instead, they'll charge you to deliver a videotape (what's that?) the next day." 1:45:29 PM    comment []