Month: March 2003

Tapestry Project

So I’m thinking.. everyone who reads here can take a moment to think of 50 words to describe how they feel about war. Not war in general, but this one. Poetic or not. Politically correct or not. I’d like to get at least 100 verses. After the responses die down, I’ll publish the full anthology on my website – with only your initials and location. What’s left there will be a patchwork quilt of voices, hopefully from every imaginable place, every imaginable walk of life.

I wanna know what the world feels like.
Continue reading “” I wanna know what the world feels like””

I had some trouble installing/building webalizer, but this is what it took to resolve it.

First, install gd and libpng from darwinports.

sudo ln -s /opt/local/lib/libgd.dylib /opt/local/lib/libgd.1.dylib


./configure --with-png-inc=/opt/local/include --with-png=/opt/local/lib --with-gdlib=/opt/local/lib --with-gd=/opt/local/include/ --enable-dns --mandir=/usr/share


I got MovableType up and running on my new machine (I’m leaning toward mercury as the name [after quicksilver, the model or product name]), and started a knowledge log. As usually happens with these things, as soon as you sit down with the proverbial blank sheet of paper, your mind goes blank. What did I want this for again?

I noted earlier that some weblog aficionados were under the delusion that weblogs were offering serious competition to mainstream news sources like CNN.

A friend and former colleague at CNN tells me that traffic was coming in at about 700,000 hits a minute during the first wave of attacks on Baghdad. That’s about 12,000 hits a second or 1 billion a day. I leave it to the reader to ponder how much bandwidth and server power that requires, but it’s something more than a cable modem and a garden variety consumer PC can answer.

And to add insult to injury, Kevin Sites’ weblog is hardly the talk of CNN Center: my source wasn’t even aware of its existence.

There’s some danger of self-delusion here: if the only news sources you read are weblogs, it’s tempting to assume everyone else does too, and thereby overestimate their importance.

I don’t read weblogs for news: I read them for commentary and perspective, and as a source of new information that balances or amplifies the news I get from more authoritative sources.

remembering rebecca: 03.03

Other words I’m hearing over and over again: an attack ‘unlike any other in history’, ‘shock, surprise, flexibility,’ and munitions on a ‘scale never before seen.’ From this, I gather that the United States hopes this war will serve as a cautionary tale to any other country — or group of terrorists — who might consider attacking the US. This war is intended, among other things, as a demonstration of our power. We are in Iraq to illustrate, in no uncertain terms, that no one can prevail against us. Will this cow the terrorists? Personally, I don’t think so. But apparently the Bush administration thinks it’s worth a try.

I’m surprised Rebecca isn’t making the connection between “shock and awe/a war unlike any other” and the muy borracho theory. It seems to be getting a lot of play.

J-Log | Kevin Sites Asked to Stop Blog | New Media

I have to wonder if CNN was worried his site (that loaded fast and had no ads) would soon start to out perform some of their own coverage on the graphics laden CNN.com.

I find it laughable that anyone thinks a weblog — any weblog — is competing on volume with CNN.com. 3+ years ago, CNN.com was doing 20 million page views a day, and that was before 9-11.

James Britt

Doc Seals and David Weinberger have an article, titled “What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else,” that discusses what they call Repetitive Mistake Syndrome. This is the tendency for some people or organizations to see a new thing as being “just like” some old thing, even when the comparison is tenuous or misses the essential nature of what is being compared.

For example, cinema was initially seen as radio with pictures, or as stage plays but projected on a big screen. TV suffered a similar fate (though there was a rare exception), and it was no surprise that when people started making Web sites the pages were all formulated on principle derived from print. (Hell, why do we call them “pages” anyway?)

There are too many who see the Web as being just another form of TV or some other form of one-way communication. More generally, bad analogies abound; anyone who speaks of the Net as being a highway, super information or not, just doesn’t understand.

Every medium goes through this: the internet has penetrated more markets and homes more quickly than radio or television, too fast to be understood for what it is. Like the story of the five blind men and the elephant, perhaps its all perception or how you use it: perhaps its a mistake to try and understand what it is when what we should do is try to see that everyone’s relationship to it may be, will be, different and unique.

Mirror.co.uk – COMMANDER WARNS SOLDIERS MAY NOT RETURN

Excerpted from Lt Col Tim Collins’, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish, address to his men before the start of their campaign:

“It is a big step to take another human life. It is not to be done lightly. I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them.[ . . . ]

“If someone surrenders to you, remember they have that right in international law. The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please. If you harm the regiment or its history by over enthusiasm in killing or in cowardice, know it is your family who will suffer.
[ . . . ]
“You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest for your deeds will follow you down through history. We will bring shame on neither our uniform or our nation.”

Shades of “we happy few, we band of brothers . . . . ” from Henry V.