"One insider said 'We can't even run ourselves, let alone a country,'" was a striking comment in a balanced enough BBC report this morning on the "reconstruction" of Iraq -- and how people in Baghdad feel about the work of those insiders.
The venerable Alistair Cooke, in "the world's longest running speech radio programme", in his latest Letter from America' considered the problem of installing an administration after the war "insoluble", should the effort fall anything of a total "recreation".
Cooke's weekly columns and mannerisms, now that he is in his '90s, sometimes grate on my nerves, yet it's one of the very few programmes I'll go out of my way to catch. Have done for years. Nick Clarke, in a brief bio, describes it as "one man's lifelong crusade to slay misconceptions and prejudice, in a quest for the Holy Grail of Anglo-American harmony." Since March 24, 1946, in fact.
"There really don't seem to be many good solutions to this mess," thinks Chris Allbritton at Back in Iraq (he isn't any more), when it comes to "the control of oil", as well as the transitional government question. This comes in the wake of the US proposals currently before the UN Security Council.
I've even posted a couple of comments on Chris's journal today, for the first time and likely the last. Had I time I'm not ready to spare, I'd contribute to other people's logs more frequently than I do. But when Chris specifically requests feedback, I'm only too happy, for starters, to reassure him that his work is valuable and professional journalism.
The debate about whether weblogs can be journalism at all should be buried. It's dead.
O.J. Lasica, a senior editor at the Online Journalism Review, explored the subject with several old hands last September and pursues it with a whole series of reflections at his own place. Blog historians recount how the "yes" or "no" issue came to a head with the 2001 attacks on the United States, drawing a critical perspective well worth reading at
Kuro5hin on October 11 that year.
That was by K5 founder rusty, who also had a dodgy tum yesterday. "Subjects that cause (rusty) to feel physical pangs of nausea" include blogging about blogs, so he should either avoid reading this or remember that many people, including a good number of the well-informed friends I hope drop in here often, still don't know what blogging is or are only just finding out.
Should rusty throw up, he's welcome to some Nautamine, not included in yesterday's picture of my tummy shelf's contents. Intended for travel sickness, which I don't suffer from, the occasional one also quells psychosomatic and other pangs. Came in useful the day I saw my first electrocuted corpse in the Métro.
Though I use the M all the time, fellow TS founders lost me when one of them yanked the term "the third rail" into a heated admin discussion we had in the early days about how much we'd allow PRS (politics  , religion  and sex  ) on the site.
It was kelly who enlightened me that t3r was not just an alternative guide to Chicago (hi there, Jocelyne!). I should have worked it out for myself. Anyway, I didn't then know about the peevish place, a rich slang resource where some of the links are to sites which translate American into English and even the other way round.
The unanswered question here, apart from Iraq's future, is Jane's one: "Where is your blog going and are you going to use categories or not?"
The reply on categories is "no", not now there's a search engine which updates itself once a week and more often when I ask. I'm no good at pigeon-holing. Left-handed too. Happy to have been reminded recently by one dangerously caged cat that the reason I couldn't understand something was "because you're a man", but she's lifting the shades  - even when my mind's mud and mush.
I'll do a separate entry sometime soon to follow up on Rainer's tip-off to some fun personality tests. For my favourite feline, all aspects of life are inseparable, whether she's up or she's down. She's not seen the tests yet. My own results came as no real surprise and were in sharp contrast to those I've seen for some mathematicians, computer programmers and probably bloggers good at categories. Most of the latter do it well and helpfully, but they are "pros"!
I didn't plan on many pictures. I didn't plan much of what's happened. I wanted a place of my own for reviews of various arts, a little tech and dollops of PRS. Then Gulf War II started, leaving no way I was going to shut up. The "factory" got dragged in a bit later largely by request, but that suits me too. If this place helps people there and elsewhere keep in touch, well and good.
I suppose I intended to keep most entries short: a singularly stupid exercise in ignoring past practice. Then some windbag wrote my bio and reminded me who sometimes I am.
Which, today, was a total slob. An overnight return of slow-wittedness and the exhausting shits has got boring beyond belief. I'm impatient now for those probes I also dread. Karin's latest kindly suggestion is "amoeba". It's been a bad idea to research that particular possibility: "invasive gastroenteritis" was particularly delightful... No. If it was that far from "Paradiso Hotel" in KwaZulu-Natal, Marianne would probably have it too...
I didn't plan to fall back in love, but that hasn't done any harm, yet. I certainly didn't plan to get so personal here and start delving into psychology, health and the sciences.
My main goal remains to spin my own little corner of the web, share as many potentially interesting links as I can and, above all usually, to entertain (while trying to write creatively also keeps me saner).
So, Jane, I did think a while back about at least changing the subtitle for something more "explanatory". But I won't. This place remains "an experiment".
11:33:45 PM link 
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