Friday, June 17, 2005

Jill Williams of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission: "Dear Bloggers...we want to make the TRC process as accessible to you as possible." 5:26:03 PM   permalink   comment []

More serious reporting (subs req) from Iraq, and more unsettling news.  Farnaz Fassihi in today's Wall Street Journal: "After one of the most violent months in Iraq since the U.S. invasion -- there were 148 car bombs and more than 750 civilian deaths in Iraq last month...surging violence has taken on a sectarian tinge that poses serious new challenges for the recently installed interim Iraqi government and U.S. forces...Even more alarming, the tension seems to reflect a broader conflict between a Sunni-dominated insurgency and Shiite-dominated government." Hmm. On the paper's opinion page, Daniel Henninger says that "news coverage of these repeated slaughters of civilians in Iraq also lacks any normative or moral context unfavorable to the perpetrators. And little wonder that in such a world the only 'side' many people in the U.S. feel comfortable with is heading for the exits." Henninger's got a point. If more people skipped the front-page reporting and went straight to the WSJ editorials, support for the war would probably be higher. Interesting which one the Journal makes available for free. 5:19:54 PM   permalink   comment []

What's worse than writing? Rewriting. What a week. 4:58:21 PM   permalink   comment []

Orrin Hatch signs Senate lynching resolution. 1:50:16 PM   permalink   comment []

Neal Stephenson in the NYT: "Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic." "Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out." I keep meaning to write a column about The Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon. 9:29:10 AM   permalink   comment []

Microsoft's Chinese service wouldn't allow Rebecca MacKinnon to title a blog "I love freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy."  Nice screenshots. Previously. 9:20:57 AM   permalink   comment []

An "Intelligent Design" blog, with an ad budget. Not universally popular. 9:16:10 AM   permalink   comment []