September 2003 – Page 4 – Richard Bennett

The Welch deal

Unless you’re sharing your meals with Osama in a Pakistani cave, you’ve read Matt Welch’s deal on blogs for CJR. My favorite part: Are bloggers journalists? Will they soon replace newspapers? The best answer to those two questions is: those are two really dumb questions; enough hot air has been expended in their name already. … Continue reading “The Welch deal”

Unless you’re sharing your meals with Osama in a Pakistani cave, you’ve read Matt Welch’s deal on blogs for CJR. My favorite part:

Are bloggers journalists? Will they soon replace newspapers?

The best answer to those two questions is: those are two really dumb questions; enough hot air has been expended in their name already.

A more productive, tangible line of inquiry is: Is journalism being produced by blogs, is it interesting, and how should journalists react to it? The answers, by my lights, are “yes,” “yes,” and “in many ways.”

The concluding graf is good too, but I don’t want to spoil your cave-dwelling fun.

I give Matt an “A” on this excellent composition.

Google Toys

Google has web site for their new toys, some of which are pretty neat. Try Google Viewer to have the results of a search played out for you. It’s like the “scan” button on a car radio.

California debate debate

The mud-slinging contest between Daniel Weintraub and this Mickey Kaus character over Weintraub’s idea of giving the debate questions out in advance is way more spirited and debate-like than anything the contestants will do among themselves. We haven’t had real political debates since Kennedy and Nixon because there are so many rules of protocol now that the candidates do everything except debate each other in these debates. Mainly, they stick to their talking points and give little speeches that have nothing much to do with the alleged debate questions. So this time around, with the questions known in advance, at least they’ll have to stick to the actual topic.

And that’s good, so Weintraub wins and Kaus loses.

Why they hate us

For the record, the late Al Qaeda theorist Yussuf al-Ayyeri explains why they hate us in jihadist book-of-the-month-club selection The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad. It’s pretty simple, really: they don’t want to get comfortable. This article by Amir Taheri in New York Post Online Edition: postopinion explains: … Continue reading “Why they hate us”

For the record, the late Al Qaeda theorist Yussuf al-Ayyeri explains why they hate us in jihadist book-of-the-month-club selection The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad. It’s pretty simple, really: they don’t want to get comfortable. This article by Amir Taheri in New York Post Online Edition: postopinion explains:

What Al-Ayyeri sees now is a “clean battlefield” in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief. This, he labels “secularist democracy.” This threat is “far more dangerous to Islam” than all its predecessors combined. The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in democracy’s “seductive capacities.”

This form of “unbelief” persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the “unalterable laws” promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and codified in the Islamic shariah (jurisprudence) until the end of time.

The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to “make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad.” If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims “reluctant to die in martyrdom” in defense of their faith.

So there you have it: to make ourselves safe from the Jihad, we simply have to turn away from prosperity, secularist democracy, and progress. So John Ashcroft really has been right all along, in his own funky little way.

Quote of the Week

Because the Internet buildout is proceeding apace, the next generation could trigger a business revolution as well. “Internet II”, about four years away, will combine broadband, wireless, and IPv6 switches, which will enable everything with electricity to have its own Web address that will make it intelligent. — Tom Friedman, Longitudes and Attitudes, pg. 22; … Continue reading “Quote of the Week”

Because the Internet buildout is proceeding apace, the next generation could trigger a business revolution as well. “Internet II”, about four years away, will combine broadband, wireless, and IPv6 switches, which will enable everything with electricity to have its own Web address that will make it intelligent. — Tom Friedman, Longitudes and Attitudes, pg. 22; from a Feb. 23, 2001 column.

This is the kind of thing Friedman has pretty well stopped speculating on since Sept. 11, which is sad.

Silicon Valley

On one of my many trips to Fry’s this weekend, I ran into an old buddy from 3Com who now works for Wi-Fi champion Atheros, and we quickly ran down 802.11, 802.15, 802.16, UWB, Intel’s wireless strategy, and the limitations of IPv6. Little chance encounters like that are what’s best about Silicon Valley, but on … Continue reading “Silicon Valley”

Busted computer

I spent the weekend doing computer repair in Santa Clara. Mrs. Bennett’s computer got itself into a mode where it wouldn’t boot. When the power was turned on, the fans all spun on the CPU, the video card, and the case, but it woudn’t complete the POST, didn’t make a beep, and didn’t sync the monitor. So no feedback from the monitor, and no beep codes. After swapping out this thing and that, I got it to work quite nicely, but the bad part wasn’t what I thought, so let’s have a contest and try and guess what the problem was.