Jarrett House North

More links that have hung around for a day or so, but refuse to get stale:

• Adam Curry’s mom has been diagnosed with cancer. Our best wishes go out to her.
• William Gibson on conservatives and fans who are surprised when he reveals his politics: “If I were to put together a truly essential thank-you list for the people who most made it possible for me to write my first six novels, I’d certainly owe as much to Ronald Reagan as to Bill Gates or Lou Reed. Reagan’s presidency put the grit in my dystopia. His presidency was the fresh kitty litter I spread for utterly crucial traction on the icey driveway of uncharted futurity. His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.”
• A website that perfectly characterizes the zeitgeist: RegretTheError.com, a blog that picks up all the corrections of all the newspapers, news sites, and stories about media accuracy.
• A Frolic of My Own writes about dangerous cheese. “Every since 9/11 it’s been harder to get. They will hold up an entire shipping container if they think it contains even a few rounds of unpasteurized cheese,” he said. Those damned French, trying to destroy our pasteurized way of life!
• Slashdot interviews Neal Stephenson, and the author comes back in a seriously funny way. I’m waiting for William Gibson to take the bait on his blog regarding Stephenson’s claims of mortal combat: “Our third fight occurred at the Peace Arch on the U.S./Canadian border between Seattle and Vancouver. Gibson wished to retire from that sort of lifestyle that required ceaseless training in the martial arts and sleeping outdoors under the rain. He only wished to sit in his garden brushing out novels on rice paper. But honor dictated that he must fight me for a third time first. Of course the Peace Arch did not remain standing for long. Before long my sword arm hung useless at my side. One of my psi blasts kicked up a large divot of earth and rubble, uncovering a silver metallic object, hitherto buried, that seemed to have been crafted by an industrial designer. It was a nitro-veridian device that had been buried there by Sterling. We were able to fly clear before it detonated. The blast caused a seismic rupture that split off a sizable part of Canada and created what we now know as Vancouver Island. This was the last fight between me and Gibson. For both of us, by studying certain ancient prophecies, had independently arrived at the same conclusion, namely that Sterling’s professed interest in industrial design was a mere cover for work in superweapons. Gibson and I formed a pact to fight Sterling. So far we have made little headway in seeking out his lair of brushed steel and white LEDs, because I had a dentist appointment and Gibson had to attend a writers’ conference, but keep an eye on Slashdot for any further developments.”
• Speaking of Stephenson and his recent obsessions: he, along with James Gleick, probably would have a lot to say about the New York Public Library’s one-sidedly idolatrous portrayal of Sir Isaac Newton.
• Doc, again, nails the point home about the difference between Internet users and “media” “consumers.”
• Donna Wentworth at the Copyfight blog gives an update on the progress (or lack thereof) of the INDUCE Act in committee. It sounds like some good strong points in favor of technological innovation have been made in the hearings; hopefully they’ll be heard over the din of the industry crying out as its business model shatters around it.
• Microsoft scales back Passport. Remember Passport?
• Excellent. The brainwashing program is working. Incidentally, we’ve always been at war with Oceania.
• And our media is liberal, of course.

Some reflections on blogging, journalism, and my last post. A common cry of bloggers is that journalists don’t touch investigations with lots of hard work, uncertain payoff, and that are politically sensitive. A complaint from many liberal bloggers was that the press parroted GOP criticisms of Kerry’s war record while staying silent on George W. Bush’s service—spotty attendance and all—in the Reserves. When CBS went after the story in a big way, I cheered—until one of the memos proved a forgery. Then I fumed. Once Big Media was burned, I figured, they wouldn’t touch the story again and it would die down—even though the rest of the allegations about Bush’s record were provable.

Thankfully, this is where bloggers come in. Paul Lukasiak, aka The AWOL Project, has been collecting information and going after Bush’s Reserve record using regulations, publicly available documents, and hard work to uncover the meaning behind the codes. This is a thankless job that few journalists would touch, especially after CBS’s embarrassment; but bloggers have continued to chase the story and are turning up some valuable findings.

So what’s the problem? I think there’s a danger that a lot of us spend a lot of energy on issues like this one precisely because they’re bloggable and lend themselves to being addressed by individuals with time on their hands, rather than looking at less personal issues about the president like his health care policies and education strategies. The problem, which the Kerry campaign appears fortunately to have identified, is that health care and education are two of the three hot-button issues for voters this election. So where are all the health care bloggers? That’s something I’d like to be reading about.

Don’t get me wrong: I think the AWOL Project is doing great work, and it’s a kind of work I’ve done in the past as well (see “Hunting for the Halliburton Contract” and “How to Spend $2 Billion”). But we need to get the blogosphere past the point where we focus on one or two issues at the expense of others that might be equally valuable to explore.