Well, my column on Supernova just got Slashdotted. Not sure why (and the little intro doesn’t exactly explain what it’s about besides quoting my lead); but it’s always an exciting opportunity to read that mixture of smart commentary and careless drive-by ignorance directed at one’s writing. The weird thing is, 98 percent of the comments seem to be directed only at the couple of sentences quoted from my lead — as though they were intended as a stand-alone philosophical statement rather than the lead-in to a much more specific piece of commentary. Virtually no one seems to have bothered to click through and read my piece. Oh well.
Archives for December 2002
Henry, we hardly knew ye
Henry Kissinger just announced that he’s resigning from the 9/11 investigation commission President Bush appointed him to lead.
It was becoming obvious that, in order to comply with the law and to allay the concerns of the 9/11 victims’ families, Kissinger was going to have to reveal a list of his consulting clients. That, it seems, was far too onerous a price to pay. Or maybe one of the names on the list — the Saudi government? who knows? — would have been problematic under the circumstances.
Well, the man has made his priorities clear.
He’s not the only one: George Mitchell, the former senator whom the Democrats named as their top man on the commission, resigned earlier this week, saying service on this commission would take too much time away from his law practice.
These men are displaying a surprising lack of dedication to helping the nation find explanations for 9/11. Surely each of them could have made the choice they made before accepting appointment to the commission.
Unless there’s something else going on here. Maybe they know something we don’t. If this commission does its job right, it will have to reach conclusions that the government doesn’t want to hear. What Kissinger and Mitchell both seem to be saying is that truth-telling is not worth the trouble.
Geek heaven
My column on Supernova is now up, here. A taste:
The danger here is that the dynamo of the Silicon Valley boom-bust cycle, in its hunger for Next Big Thing fuel, will seize upon Wi-Fi, blogs and Web services and then spit them out, chewed-up and spent — before they’ve ever had a chance to mature and show off their potential. |
Smart match
Okay, I’m awfully out of touch with pop culture today compared with the days when I was a theater and movie critic. So maybe I’m the last one to learn what I just read about the plans of New Line, the movie studio behind Peter Jackson’s smashing “Lord of the Rings,” to follow up on that success. The Wall Street Journal says the studio has planned an adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s beautiful “His Dark Materials” trilogy — with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. Bring it on!
Pirates ahoy
Tim O’Reilly’s new essay on piracy offers much wisdom. “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” “Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say “may” because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues.” Read the whole thing here.
Big worlds
Joel Spolsky has posted a new essay on programming: “Lord Palmerston on Programming.” Joel writes about how vast the pools of knowledge programmers need to master to become really expert in each of the many programming “worlds” that are popular today. Choice quote:
People who only know one world get really smarmy, and every time they hear about the complications in the other world, it makes them think that their world doesn’t have complications. But they do. You’ve just moved beyond them because you are proficient in them. These worlds are just too big and complicated to compare any more. Lord Palmerston: “The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it.” |
Emergent organization
Kriselda of Different Strings has started up a mailing list and a web ring for Salon bloggers. You can find out more and sign up here.
Must-read
Brad DeLong’s scathing analysis of White House economics adviser Larry Lindsey’s ouster. Choice quote:
Today we know that it never crosses the minds of the powers-that-be in the Bush White House that good economic policies might be worth pursuing because good economic policies lead to a stronger economy. To the powers-that-be in the Bush White House, economic policies are way to reward favored groups of constituents. And their effect on the economy? They don’t need to think about no stinking effect of policy on the economy. |
Snow crash?
Does anyone else find it odd that, when it came time for the Bush administration to replace Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill — a CEO of an old-line industry who worked with Dick Cheney in the Ford administration days — it chose John Snow: CEO of an old-line industry who worked with Dick Cheney in the Ford administration days? (It seems the answer is yes: Business Week asks a similar question.) Snow, we’re told, is smoother than O’Neill, who quickly developed a reputation as a loose cannon. If that’s wrong, and Snow turns out to be another O’Neill in this regard too, we have a new nickname for the Bush White House: Cheney’s zanies.
New cool
I missed Dave Winer’s Chinese-restaurant bash last night, which sounds like it was a blast, because I had to tend to an extremely mundane task: I needed to buy a new refrigerator.
Have you ever opened your freezer one morning to be met by a waft of luke-warm air, a drip-drip of meltings and the unmistakably awful odor of a mountain of defrosted and rapidly spoiling perishables? That’s what happened to us on Sunday, when the old fridge that was already on its last legs when we moved into our house six years ago finally gave up the ghost.
The replacement cycle for refrigerators is positively tortoise-like compared to the speed with which we are expected to upgrade our computers. But we should have known it was time to ditch the thing when the handle broke off last month. Instead, I chose to view that as a feature, not a bug: Hey, now the three-year-olds couldn’t open it by themselves!