What’s wrong with you people?

I mean, a good 70% of you are still using Internet Exploiter.

Don’t you know that Mozilla is where it’s at?

-sigh-

Well, if this really is a chemical weapons plant, the UN will feel like a bunch of idiots.

Wait, no, that would imply that they cared.

The WMD extermination tactic was a ruse to get this war started, but a useful ruse. Regime change is all this war’s about, really, and it’s silly to fly it under any other flag. However, the push for regime change goes back five years in Congress, so that’s fine.

I love how the French said they’d jump in if chemical munitions were used. This thing would be over before the French could get in gear and in the region, were that the case. Use of chemical munitions won’t slow or deter the corps–it’ll send it into a fit of rage, likely. Can’t blame ‘em.

This is going to be one for the record books, though: fastest invasion of a non-contiguous nation. [Germany's invasions in WWII don't count in such a concern: this is power projection at its finest.]

Clausewitz and Asimov [via Salvor Hardin] were right: war is the continuation of politics by another means, and violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Well, so the U.S. military is admitting that the Iraqis likely have some American POW’s. Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite network that you either love or hate, ran video from Iraq showing the POW’s being interviewed–and, apparently, some of the folks on camera were soldiers who’d been … executed.

Now, the U.S. government asked Al-Jazeera to stop running the tape, and after running it for an hour, they assented to the U.S. request. Why? The interview was a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Imagine that … Iraq violating international law. That’s never happened.

This raises a couple questions:

1) Is the U.S. ground assault going too fast, too soon because they have media “embedded” in the units?

2) Will anything come of the violations, or will the world community back down from whacking Iraq yet again?

I remember having a nasty case of the stomach flu the night Steve Olin and Tim Crews died.

Funny how memories linger with you. I was sick with all the things you get sick with at the time, but in the in-between, I sat in a swivel rocking chair that used to belong to my late grandfather, sipping on fluids and watching CNN in the middle of the night. Unlike the current mess with Iraq, it was a slow news night, so CNN ran round-the-clock coverage on this, reporting the information they had as often as it ran out–which, in this case, was every couple of minutes. Of course, when you’re running a 102-degree fever and trying to will your stomach to serenity, you have a short attention span.

It makes me realize that my generation has a lot of “TV memories”: I remember sitting at the dinner table in January 1991, watching Tom Brokaw telling us that we’d gone to war; there’s always memories regarding those terrorist attacks of 18 months ago that we’ve had to trivialize with two numbers–nine eleven–because the enormity of it all is too much for us to grasp; and countless of other really sad things.

Does TV help reinforce these memories?

Unlike in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 in the United States, the major cable news networks are not homogeneous in their coverage.

Frankly, this is quite surprising to me.

Last night, Fox News Channel began reporting on images showing “panicked digging” at the site of Wednesday’s bombing, including Saddam Hussein himself being pulled out on a stretcher. I just did a cursory look at CNN.com, and I don’t see anything about this at all there.

I also flipped over to CNN twenty minutes later–just at the time that FNC began the self-congratulatory back-patting over how cool they were to scoop everyone–to see if CNN had anything on this. Nothing.

I’m quite amused, as an amateur journalist and news-watcher, that the news is not as homogeneous as it usually is. Most of the cable news networks are startlingly similar when they go into a full-news cycle: their anchors quell their political biases, and it seems as if everyone watches everyone else and makes sure that, if they are scooped, it’s only by a few moments.

That this isn’t the case is quite interesting to me. Everyone is taking their own slant on the stories here, choosing to highlight their own threads in the story. Everyone’s loving the fact that the U.S. military has let reporters be “embedded” with the lead units, and frankly, it is an interesting phenomenon. Of course, given the state of the Iraqi military, it’s not as if there’s much danger in doing so, eh?

This just all amuses a man sitting on his bed at 12:21 in the afternoon, hair looking like an electroshock experiment gone bad, munching on peanut butter-and-honey sandwiches and wondering when he’ll get bored enough with the bombing to go out to the grocery store and mow the lawn…

I referenced something from Clay Shirky’s Web site on a message board just now, so I pulled up shirky.com and decided to peer through the archives.

I then found his article on how Weblogs are killing professional publishing and not only removing barriers to entry but removing the need to pay for quality writing.

I find it interesting and very true … but it makes me wonder what the ultimate economic effect is. Yes, I imagine that dead tree media will always exist–after all, it’s survived challenges of other technological media–but those challengers have always had their own barriers to entry and were still professional. But is this a good economic effect? Sure, it’s great for consumers, but producers ultimately suffer.

Now, should we pity the relatively small number of professional content producers? Maybe so. Those who write well have traditionally been paid for it, and in the last century or so, they’ve had the potential to be paid quite handsomely. Are we in for a return to the days of patronage? Will something else happen?

The only reason that I care about things like these is that I know plenty of people for whom creating art is a passion, and I always, always urge people to follow their passions. However, removing barriers to entry ends up eroding the economic benefit of being a producer … and then I wonder what those people do for a living while they live out their passions. Do passions have to become hobbies, seconded to the need to put money on the table and a broadband connection into the house? Ugh.

[Yeah, so I'm pushing to make ijsm.org a real Weblog, dammit. So there.]

Well, since de-lofting the bed and moving it, I’ve slept better. [Saturday, I slept a lot, but that's because I'd slept in the recliner the last two nights.] Last night, I went and took Mike his CD of hockey photos and then went to TGI Friday’s with the SGA people–but only because Kat was there. Afterwards, I ran by Wal-Mart, since I was out of shampoo. While there, I picked up a room humidifier in an effort to relieve some of the semi-regular sinus issues I’ve been having.

This morning, I woke up without sinus pain or pressure for the first time in a while. Yay.

Of course, now I get to go to work. Booooo.

[This has been another in a series: 'Geof Hates His Job, But It Pays Him ... For Now'.]

I hate this work machine.

I hate it with a passion.

I hate Windows 95.

I hate that Windows 95 is on my work machine.

I hate that my computer crashed and spent two hours looking for cross-linked files.

I hate that, when it finally came back up, it crashed about 40 minutes later.

I’m having a really good day, can’t ya tell?

I think I’d actually be happy to get the flu right now.

Boy, am I unhappy at work or what?

Last week’s revelation: the shop is down to 32-hour weeks. The salaried employees have to–have to–charge 8 hours’ vacation on Friday if their contract isn’t working overtime to meet schedule.

I’m glad I’m in the Project Office…

The bad thing about music is that, well, it’s addicting.

Part of that’s not so bad, really; if it’s cool or meaningful [or both], well, it’s edifying in a way.

But then there’s the part that is bad: it can get expensive.

My work with Caedmon’s Call and Derek Webb has introduced me to the Nashville faith-based singer-songwriter community in a number of ways. One is that I hear these people at a variety of concerts, and another is that I get to meet these people and hang out with them. [Mind you, that's darn, darn cool.]

But then when you get to know folks, you feel compelled to buy their CD’s. And that can do damage to your pocketbook if’n you’re not careful.

But hey, it’s not as bad as, say, a trip to Best Buy …

[This entry typed while listening to Andrew Osenga's Photographs, which is a kickin' disc.]