Leave it to country-rocker Steve Earle to write the first song about John Walker Lindh, American outlaw: John Walker’s Blues. I haven’t heard the song yet, but Earle is a smart musician who’s earned his compassionate streak the hard way. And I’l bet that what he has to say on the subject is more valuable than a hundred op-ed thumbsuckers.
Archives for July 2002
Obits
RIP: Chaim Potok (“The Chosen”); Leo McKern (who played Rumpole of the Bailey). Also passed away, though I cannot imagine he is resting in peace, nor can I wish him such: William Pierce, the neo-Nazi and white supremacist who wrote “The Turner Diaries.”
Salon Premium and blog fees
James Scheinblum and others are raising the perfectly good question: Shouldn’t Salon Premium subscribers get a discount on their annual blog fee?
Short answer is, we want to do something like this and are considering it. But both Salon Premium ($30 a year) and Salon blogs ($39.95 a year for hosting and software updates) are annual services that have been priced at the low end to cover costs and provide modest profit margins for the companies involved (Salon for Salon Premium, Salon and UserLand for Salon blogs). We think both services are reasonable deals. We’d still like to show our Premium subscribers some thanks, though. But we have one whole set of software pieces sitting at www.salon.com that manages Premium subscriptions, and another at blogs.salon.com that plugs into UserLand, and its storefront for software sales. We could have spent weeks or months trying to tie these together before launching this project. Instead, we wanted to get the doors open now.
Tips from Cadenhead
Rogers Cadenhead has started a category (sub grouping of posts by topic) on his blog offering technical support and tips for Salon Bloggers.
Dave on the deal
Dave Winer’s Davenet post on the Salon Blogs/UserLand deal. Press release here.
Mystery user
Over at Second p0st the mystery user (actually it seems to be developer Phillip Pearson — welcome!) who found our server back when we were in test mode is keeping close watch as the new blogs get started.
Invisible hand or dead hand?
Tonight’s Salon cover story surveys economists and other experts on the pressing question: What should President Bush do about the cratering markets and becalmed economy? We know Bush’s own prescription: He wants to lower taxes for the wealthy further, to stand by his bizarrely disoriented Secretary of the Treasury (who told reporters, according to Bloomberg News, “I’m constantly amazed that anybody cares what I do”), and take a monthlong vacation at his ranch. As the New York Times’ Paul Krugman keeps reminding us, Bush’s economic plan has remained unchanged from 1999 — when the economy looked, ahem, very different. This is known as the “dead hand on the tiller” approach, and it usually leads to a nasty collision.
Capitulate, bottom feeders!
One of the stranger things about the stock market’s current desolation is the game of “find the bottom.” A market bottom, we’re told, arrives only when the last bull has expired and the last optimistic investor throws in the towel. This is known as “capitulation.” Once the market has achieved capitulation, then it can turn around and begin climbing again.
But the very act of saying “We’ve hit bottom, now I’m going to invest again” means that you are not capitulating, and therefore the bottom hasn’t yet arrived. So, paradoxically, there is no bottom as long as someone thinks there’s a bottom. Only when everyone believes that the market is just going to keep dropping, and hasn’t hit bottom yet, has a bottom been truly reached. Of course, at that point there’s no one left to buy and start the turnaround.
Why host your blog with Salon?
There are lots of ways you can publish a blog. But it isn’t always so easy to get yourself noticed. By starting your blog with Salon, you’ll automatically be part of a community of Salon-based bloggers, which will help you get the word out and bring visitors to read what you write. Your blog will be listed on the Salon blogs recent updates and rankings by page-views pages. And I’ll be following the new blogs as they come online here, providing links and pointers to the most interesting bloggers and posts.
What’s a blog?
You’re reading one now. It’s a Web site with writing and links organized in reverse chronological order. Updated frequently. Usually written by one person. On anything under the sun.