Protest the evils of oil and polyester!

: The World Naked Bike Ride protests oil dependency. Who the hell knows what flesh has to do with fuel but, hey, anything for cheap peeps. [via Jimmiz]

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. . .

Unnews

: Ethan Zuckerman links to the U.N.'s list of most underreported stories and then lists five of his own. What are yours?

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. . .

Catching up in Iraq

: I'm catching up with my reading of Iraqi weblogs. Read this from Baghdadi, an Iraqi-American, on the new government, and tell me whether you saw any of this excitement in media coverage:

The beginning for the new Iraq has started and the people of Iraq finally got a government they should be proud of. I was so happy this morning watching the new Iraqi government and the names of those ministers and of course the new president. There was one moment during the whole ceremony that equated to the moment when they announced the capture of Saddam and that is when they announced the new president of Iraq, to me that was a dream comes true. I believe most of us young Iraqis when we hear the phrase president of Iraq, we think of Saddam and only Saddam. Well, history was made today Saddam and his clans have no chance of getting the power or any position in the new Iraq. Iraq is changing and I believe it is changing toward a free and democratic Iraq. I spoke with my family in Baghdad twice today and they are so excited about the new government, my brother was telling me that we all are praying for these guys and Inshallaha god will be with them. I think this is a new era for us and for the Middle East as a whole. Listening to all the names that were announced today, you can not, but think that this new government is the most educated individuals among all the governments in the Middle East. Most of them have a doctorate in their fields of expertise not to mention a lot of them have lived and gained there experience in the west. With the help of the US and the rest of the world, I believe these guys will definitely get Iraq out of this mess.

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. . .

A year in the life

: A picture a day for a year in one of my favorite cities, Berlin. [via Kunstspaziergänge]

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Good swarms

: Steven Johnson not only gives some link charity to Spirit of America, he also seems something bigger going on here -- good swarms:

But the site makes me wonder whether this isn't the beginning of a fascinating new chapter in the web's gift economy. Thanks to the passion of the bloggers themselves, and clustering technologies like Technorati and Blogdex, we've already mastered the art of locating and quickly swarming around the week's hot news item or thinkpiece. (You know the drill: Clay posts a provocative essay about power laws on Monday, and by Friday there are fifty in-depth responses, a dozen fact checks, ten suggestions for future research, and a handful of requests for the Lazy Web.) What Spirit Of America suggests is a version of that swarming directed towards Good Causes: someone halfway across the globe (or halfway across the country, or the county) puts out a call for help setting up a wi-fi network in an under-funded school, or repairing a sewage treatment facility, and within five days they're flooded with funds, spare parts, technical expertise, and good will. And when the network goes online, or the sewage starts getting processed again, we all get to see the results. (Maybe not so fun for sewage, but you get the idea.) And then we get to move on to the next cause.

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. . .

Say 'blog!'
: Scoble imagines the blogging camera:

Imagine a digital camera with Wifi built in, and with something like Radio UserLand built in. Now that'd be crazy, huh? Take a picture, have it automatically thrown up to a weblog whenever there's connectivity (which is quite often now -- even the San Francisco Giants' baseball stadium has WiFi).

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. . .

Ground Zero's future

: The NY Times celebrates disarray in cultural plans for the World Trade Center site and in a typically self-indulgent editorial act has its own critics blather on about what they'd do there (or, actually, blather on to try to show how cute they can be).

A.O. Scott, the movie critic, ends up absurdly but starts out ok:

We already have more than our share of monuments to polite culture — more than we can use, actually. Furthermore, the concentration of dance companies, museums, performance spaces and whatever else on newly developed acreage is a recipe for urban desolation. The last time such a thing was tried on a large scale, it produced the Lincoln Center complex, which has demanded respect for 40 years without inspiring much in the way of love. Why, on the site of our biggest civic catastrophe, would we want yet another middle-brow mausoleum?

Herbert Muschamp, as always, proves to be a self-centered blowhard

....I have recently become more sympathetic to the "cop-out" position, which would mean abandoning the flawed ground zero design process altogether in favor of reconstructing the twin towers more or less as they were. Certainly, I'm prepared to defend reconstruction as a cultural act. It would be an offering to Mnemosyne, mother of the muses, from whom all culture flows.

The reduction to essentials is a great New York tradition, evident in our engineering and in our art. It is the correct tradition to invoke here. And then, to insure its revival, I would propose a school, a center of unlearning as well as learning, a place for disembedding ourselves from the welter of fantasies that has enveloped the country in recent years.

This guy should spend his time writing in crayon in the ward. What an insufferable bunch of offensive jibberish.

: But Steve Cuozo in the NY Post remains the voice of sanity regarding the World Trade Center. On Thursday, I was down there shaking my head at a still-destroyed building bringing back such unpleasant memories on the north side of the site. On Friday, Cuozo wrote about it:

Nearly three years after 9/11, the blackened, 15-story, soot-caked ruin of Fiterman Hall continues to cast a pall on Downtown. The bleak relic not only darkens the north rim of Ground Zero, it threatens the economic viability of Larry Silverstein's new, $700 million 7 World Trade Center rising across the street from it. And everybody involved is passing the buck.

That the macabre eyesore remains in place is a civic disgrace. New Yorkers took deserved pride in the swift cleanup of Ground Zero. Yet this white-brick structure just north of there, on the block bounded by West Broadway, Barclay and Greenwich streets and Park Place, still looks much as it did on Sept. 12, 2001.

It's outrageous that such blight remains just weeks before the Freedom Tower — symbolic of Downtown's tremulous rebirth — breaks ground. And thanks to political gridlock, the eerie monstrosity may haunt the scene for a long time to come.

Exactly.

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. . .

Is a hero a hero only if you like the war?

: Cori Dauber reports this from Andy Rooney on Imus:

His complaint was with the practice of considering all the soldiers, airmen, Marines, sailors and Coastguardsmen serving in Iraq as heroes. Most soldiers in Iraq, he said, "they're not heroes, they're victims. They got trapped in the Army."

And what about the WW II analogy? There was "no question about the ethical, moral, righteousness of our war against the Nazis." Today's situation is "not at all the same." (Even if you don't think we should have gone to war in Iraq, I still don't understand how people can argue against the moral righteousness of the war as a humanitarian intervention. It's just beyond me.)

But Rooney continued: "They just don't have a righteous war to fight," and that's the only reason today's military forces aren't a Greatest Generation. "They don't have an occasion to rise to."

Fascism is fascism, and it is always a righteous cause to fight fascism with an appetite for global conquest.

I agre with Cori on all points and, as usual, disagree with Rooney.

These soldiers were not trapped in the Army; they volunteered.

Why is getting rid of murdering fascists in Germany different from getting rid of murdering fascists in Iraq?

And -- in the context this discussion comes from, it's Bush talking about the war on terrorism and not just the war in Iraq -- this generation most certainly does have the occasion to rise to: the defeat of terrorism and Islamic mass murderers.

: And by the way, how come when a man goes on a rampage destroying buildings throughout his own town and nearly killing his own neighbors, he's known as a "nut" while people who do that in Iraq are known as "insurgents?"

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. . .

Seven

: John Battelle reports that Andrew Anker -- ex-head of Wired Digital, ex-VC -- has joined SixApart, making of Movable Type, as exec vp of corporate development.

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. . .

We are all journalists?

: Seth Godin says we are all journalists:

So, there's now almost 3,000,000 bloggers tracked by some of the online services. That's 1% or so of the active online population, and since it seems as though the number is doubling every month or so, it's starting to get significant.

Remember how you used to curse journalists? Curse them for being lazy, or hyperbolic? ...

Now, everyone with a blog is a journalist. When you run a post accusing a politician of having no personality, for example, you're indulging the public's desire to elect a dinner partner, not a president. When you chime in on the day's talking points, you're a tool, not a new voice.

So, we come to the moment of truth. Now that anyone who wants to be a journalist CAN be a journalist, are the ethics going to get better... or worse?

I'm an optimist most of the time, but on this issue, I'm afraid I'm a realist.

Or we reinvent journalism.

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. . .

R.I.P.

: I won't have much to add to others' posts on the death of President Reagan. Here are lots of links at MaroonBlog.

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. . .

I saw that somewhere

: FeedDemon 1.1 is out and it includes my favorite feature: search of recent feeds. This is the perfect answer to the hmmm-I-saw-that-somewhere problem.

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. . .

Shucks, thanks

: Jessica makes a post to say:

I am sorry I called Jeff Jarvis Howard Stern's Hand Puppet.
There. I said it.

That's one of the nicest things anybody has ever said about me.

Which shows you what people say about me.

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. . .

A burger with a side of Hoobastank, and supersize my wi-fi

: Thanks to PaidContent's job listings, I see the McDonald's is hiring a consultant to make "digital customer services" a menu offering.

McDonald's Digital Re-Imaging team is tasked with the identification, testing and optimization of new digital customer services for McDonald's restaurants. These self-funding or for profit services will enhance the McDonald's in-restaurant customer experience by leveraging our existing high-speed network. Examples of these services include Wi-Fi internet access and a myriad of content and connection applications.

Why should Starbucks be the place to get online? McDonald's has a helluva lot more locations and cheaper drinks. And if Starbucks can go into the music business, why shouldn't McDonald's? It will sell to a younger, hipper (read: less jazzy, folksy) audience.

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No webflower, she

: Mary Hodder lists all the "social media in my pocket.'
And why did this sound vaguely like Mae West

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. . .

Michael and Me

: A filmmaker does a Michael Moore on Michael Moore, following him around trying futilely to get an interview -- and this guy had no problem getting distribution.

Twin Cities filmmaker Mike Wilson's upcoming "Michael Moore Hates America" details his unsuccessful attempts to interview Moore, the director who won an Oscar two years ago for "Bowling for Columbine." ...

At least three months before its release, the film has catapulted Wilson into national prominence. When an item about "Michael Moore Hates America" appeared on a showbiz Web site earlier this week, Wilson says, he was contacted by nine distributors who want to help book the documentary into theaters.

: Moore's new trailer is up here.

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. . .

What's a witch?

: Parents should be slapped for taking young, young children to Harry Potter. In front of us just now was a young boy, 4ish, who had no idea what was happening, of course, and also has not yet learned his inside voice. He's asking confused questions every few minutes. As young Harry tries his kid-actor best to show a look of terror, the kid in front of us asked/demanded/shouted, "Why's he scared?" Well, kid, if you want to read about a thousand pages...

: I thought the movie was better than the last two (and I didn't like the last two much): more plotting, more characterization, more maturity, less and-then-and-then-and-then narrative.
But my son liked the last one better. And my son's the one who's supposed to like it.

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. . .

This picture will destroy the plastic-surgery industry

: One look is all it takes.

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. . .

Explode your radio

: Doc Searls has a wonderful, brain-blasting post on the future of radio -- or what we all should imagine the future of radio to be.

He starts noting that Nokia wants to make phones the preferred device for listening to radio (amen to that; I wish I could listen on my phone or my iPod and not have to carry another device to stay live with the world). And so Nokia wants stations to send data with songs and enable phones for purchase and limited interactivity.

Doc sees that bet and ups it four four big ideas. He wants stations, starting with NPR et al, to send out RSS notifications with programs. I want to hear more about what that can do (which is my way of saying I'm too stupid to get the full potential). Second, wants big companies to partner with small developers and he links to some examples. Yup. Third, he wants to improve the software we use to play Internet radio. Amen. Fourth, and this is where the brain starts to blow, he said:

...we need to take this chance to break radio free from the notion that it's just a commercial utility controlled by government and exempt from constitutional as well as common sense protections of free speech. That means we start our own stations, on which we play, much as we now blog, what we please. But not on the old broadcast model. Instead, on the new RSS-fortified interactive model. The one with the civic gestures we call links.

Imagine a world in which all this comes together to take an old medium and explode and reinvent it:

: New means of transport bring richer data.
: New means of transport bring two-way communication.
: New means of transport bring new commerce and financial support.
: New high-speed, always-on-everywhere means of communication (3G cellular, wi-fi, and their successors) bring high-quality entertainment and communication to you wherever you go.
: New authoring tools allow anyone to create high-quality entertainment and distribute it to the world and even raise support for it.
: New tools yield new passion and new outlets for talent (see blogs)
: The result, as Doc says, is blog radio: an explosion of choice, talent, commerce, communication, interaction, entertainment.

Forget Howard Stern just going to satellite and reinventing radio. He should help create a whole new f'ing medium.

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. . .

Link love/Tough love

: This story makes me wonder why anyone would pay attention to reporters analyzing a story when they could hear instead from a pro who speaks from experience -- that is, a player who blogs.

I'll start near the beginning: Jason Calacanis, founder of WeblogsInc, sent me and VC Fred Wilson emails gently whining that we had not given his new Autoblog any link love.

Fred returned, instead, with some tough love. He gave Jason some very fine advice. Damning with faint praise, he said Autoblog was the best looking of WeblogInc's blogs thus far; he then went on to say the rest "feel very bland." Next, he said he doesn't care about cars, being a New Yorker. Next, he asked, "Where is the advertising?" And finally, he said:

I am not sure I get where Jason is going with Weblogs Inc. I thought it was a trade publishing model with a focus on tech and startups. But now he's got Engadget, AutoBlog, and BlogMaverick which are more consumer focused. It may be that he's putting up a lot and seeing what sticks. That's not a bad model early in a market. But I think he's eventually got to pick a target market and focus on it.

Bottom line - Autoblog is a nice blog. I bet it will build a good audience. I am rooting for Jason and everyone else who is trying to turn blogs into a business. Jason is smart, scrappy, hungry, bold, brave, and agressive. He'll figure it out.

I agree with Fred. Most startups begin wanting to do a half-dozen things and then finally figure out the one thing they should be doing. Jason did the opposite: He started with a clear focus on trade tech blogs and then expanded into a half-dozen things from consumer to celebrity to software. I'd advise Jason to focus on building a big business on what he has proven he knows well: Take trade content and build it into a content, advertising, data, report, and conference business under a strong brand -- but at less cost than in the old, print world and way ahead of any of those old, print competitors. A company needs to figure out its essence -- just as I advised SixApart that they should be doing -- and that's what I happen to think the essence of WeblogsInc. will (or should) be.

But that's not the point of telling the story. What impressed me about this little episode is that here's Fred Wilson, a top-of-the-heap VC who has raised and won (and, of course, lost) more money than most of us can count, giving free -- and public -- advice to Jason.

I happened to sit last week with Fred and his partner Brad Burnham (who ought to be the next blogging VC) as I introduced them to someone else and as we chatted about this company and that, I was impressed anew with a VC's ability to summarize the essence of companies and industries and opportunities and risks in just a sentence. Through experience, they take on the art of abstraction of poets. And that's what Fred is giving Jason in that post. And he's doing in public, so -- unlike any time before -- we get to watch and listen and learn. It benefits Jason. It benefits Fred or else he wouldn't do it; this is how he will make contact with people who will come into the relationship knowing what he thinks. It benefits our baby industry because, as Fred says, if Jason succeeds it's good for everyone else who wants to succeed in this space. And it benefits us, the VC voyeurs.

Finally, that's what makes me think there's no reason to listen to the analysis of a reporter who makes himself an instant expert on a company or an industry when we can go to a player's blog and learn from their expertise and experience.

Welcome to our new transparent world.

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. . .

Cookies in RSS

: I talked about this with Fred Wilson yesterday and Dave Morgan today -- and Fred beat me to blogging it:

We need to get RSS readers to take cookies if we are ever going to make RSS work as a successful medium.

Oh, I know that consumers will want to read RSS; I'm convinced. But unless publishers can make money off content transported that way, they will handicap feeds, giving readers only headlines and excerpts and working too hard to make them come to their sites when they should look at RSS as just another way to feed content to consumers.

Dave, head of Tacoda and one of the smartest people I know in this biz, agrees that setting cookies is essential for advertisers and thus for publisher revenue but he's not worried because he thinks that browsers will take on RSS functionality. I think he's right. But Dave also said it's going to take Microsoft time to add RSS into its next versions of IE and Outlook. In the meantime, there is an opportunity for others to blaze the trail.

So let's take this one step further...

It's time for some creative thinking about the creative potential of RSS and content and advertising. Look at what ESPN has done using RSS as a transport mechanism for video and video advertising (when you come to the ESPN home page, you'll find video already downloaded and ready to serve because it was sent you in the background as an RSS feed... and you won't even know you're using RSS).

RSS has the potential to serve better content and advertising. Reuters started using it to send a feed of video links. Hell, it could send the video clips, too (if Reuters weren't worried about just streaming). Content and ads with video and other rich media could be downloaded to your machine in the background and served up immediately. And if this comes in feeds to which you subscribe and if it doesn't slow down your machine and if the content is compelling then you won't object -- and the content and advertising will be more targeted as well.

Adam Curry has been playing around with RSS and audio. Ernie Miller is shouting the wonders of RSS + BitTorrent from every mountaintop.

OK, now it's time for content producers -- TV, online, print -- and marketers -- from big creative agencies -- to wake up and smell the potential of RSS. It's another way to deliver content; in many ways, it's a better way. So what all can it do? Now is the time to try.

: See also Staci Kramer's OJR story on RSS.

: UPDATE: Scott in the comments says advertising will break RSS as it broke email. My reply:

Scott:
I disagree. Advertising will support RSS, as it supports Web content. Advertising did indeed break email because you have no control over what is sent to you. In RSS, you do. Of course, a publisher could mess up the RSS feed with intrusive advertising but if it gets too bad people will unsubscribe to that publisher's feed. On the other hand, if the publisher can't make money from the RSS feed -- and if that feed cannibalizes its Web business -- then they won't put up RSS and THAT is what will break RSS. So I'd put it the other way: No having advertising is what will break RSS.

: UPDATE: Seyad in the comments quite properly corrects my slopping wording above: Of course, RSS supports cookies in that it can send out cookies just as HTML does. What I'm really asking for, of course, is that RSS aggregators and readers support cookies consistently. Thanks for the correction, Seyad. (I am, I'll remind everyone, the poster boy for the A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing Foundation.)

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. . .

Busted

: Henry Copeland busts the Boston Globe's Hiawatha Bray...

...who wrote in a March 2002 article for the Boston Globe that "blogging is an ephemeral fad, destined to burn itself out in a year or two." The original article has disappeared into the Globe's archives, but its trace is here. Isn't it time to revisit that prediction Hiawatha?

A reporter with balls would eat crow publicly.

: UPDATE: Henry adds in the comments:

Turns out I need to eat a little crow too. As Corvidophile Ken Layne noted in my blog's comments, Bray actually wrote on June 1 in the Globe: "Over the past two years, blogging has gone from an eccentric hobby to a powerful new form of journalism." Quite an about face. Sadly, no recognition by Bray or the Globe of the prior failed prediction, but at least Bray has now climbed aboard the bandwagon. Bad news for blogging?

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A friend is worth.... not much

: Kept thinking about Friendster's hiring of Scott Sassa as its new head and for me it comes down to this: Sassa didn't have a job and Friendster doesn't have a business.

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Huff and puff and blow that bubble up

: I want to nod my head and agree with everything in this quote until I remind myself that it comes from Mark Andreesen, with whom I would not invest my passbook account. But I did like the quote anyway:

The economics of the Internet have undergone something like a thousand-times swing. If you're going to launch an Internet site or an Internet business today, it's probably going to cost about a tenth of what it would have cost five years ago, but you're going to have 10 times more consumers you can address and probably 10 times the advertising revenue. There's a seriousness and commitment and dedication and effort and investment going into it now that is a lot more interesting and a lot more real than what was happening in the '90s.

Somebody have a pin?

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. . .

Rococo.com

: I'll bet no blog conference has ever been held in such a luxurious setting.

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One good link deserves another

: Jason Calacanis was upset with me. What, no link love for his new auto blog? I complained that he hadn't given any link love to Spirit of America. Well, he jumped up and linked generously. So now here's another link to Jason's auto blog. Looks good. Rides smooth.

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Howdy, neighbor

: The wonderful and talented Debra Galant has started a new hyperlocal blog -- Barista and Bloomfield Avenue -- and it's damned good. Here's another explan.
It takes time for hyperlocal to grow because (a) the blogs come from the passion and effort of neighbors so motivated and (b) the traffic has to grow organically, like a fine coffee bean. But grow, it will.
Congrats, Debra.
And I'll take a large decaf, no room for milk. And a blueberry scone, please.

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. . .

.IQ

: Iraq wants the .IQ domain. Great idea on so many levels: Iraq can and should build a robust and free presence on the Internet (shaming many a neighbor). And, hell, Iraq can sell use of .IQ to outsiders for a profitable price. Someday, domains could be more valuable than oil, eh?

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. . .

Baathist Broadcasting Company

: OK, it's hearsay but I can just hear them say it, can't you? Harry sends us this from the Observer's Nick Cohen in the New Statesman saying that the BBC wouldn't run stories critical of the "peace" movement:

Just before the war against Iraq I began to receive strange calls from BBC journalists. Would I like information on how the leadership of the anti-war movement had been taken over by the Socialist Workers Party? Maybe, I replied. It was depressing that a totalitarian party was in the saddle, but that's where the SWP always tries to get. Why get excited?

Oh there are lots of reasons, said the BBC hacks. The anti-war movement wasn't a simple repetition of the old story of the politically naive being led by the nose by sly operators. The far left was becoming the far right. It had gone as close to supporting Ba'athist fascism as it dared and had formed a working alliance with the Muslim Association of Britain, which, along with the usual misogyny and homophobia of such organisations, also believed that Muslims who decided that there was no God deserved to die for the crime of free thought. In a few weeks hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, would allow themselves to be organised by the opponents of democracy and modernity and would march through the streets of London without a flicker of self-doubt. Wasn't this a story?

It's a great story, I cried. But why don't you broadcast it?

We can't, said the bitter hacks. Our editors won't let us.

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. . .

Action

: Mike Tucker, an American filmmaker in Berlin, has gone to Baghdad to make two movies with the soldiers there. He has a blog and trailers for the latest up here. Watch the first trailer: GI rap.

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. . .

Money makes ze veb go around

: In case you missed it, Nick Denton launched a custom-blogged site for a big-name advertiser, Nike.

It's significant for two reasons: First, and most important this is a major brand using weblogs as a branding medium. That's big, people. It took ages for major web publishers to convince big advertisers that the Internet could be a branding medium (that is, a place where you associate your brand with quality content to good effect, rather than merely going for clicks or direct response). That is why The Times' Martin Nisenholtz had to create the Online Publishers Association. But here, Denton has created an environment suitable for branding, and Nike -- a king of brands -- bought it (for good bucks). That is great for the medium.

Second, Denton gave Nike a new and creative means of advertising with a custom blog. It's a new form and needs to get its legs. It needs to learn how to involve and interact with the audience/public/consumers; it needs to find a voice that makes the blog compelling and is still compatible with the brand; it needs to surprise with links out into the Web and not just into Nike's festival. The custom-published blog also needs to confirm that the audience understands this was bought (but Gawker's content is not), which they accomplish with clear "advertising section" labels. What's important is that a premier blogger saw the need and opportunity to serve a branded advertiser in a creative way.

: Rex Hammock, custom-publishing mogul, adds:

Since Nick Denton is today announcing that Gawker Media is launching a "contract publishing" service, I have decided to announce that Hammock Publishing is doing the same. Actually, we launched it about 13 years ago, but today seemed to be a good day to announce it....

As for Hammock Publishing, we anticipate launching our first "custom published" weblog later this summer. I will keep you posted. Promise.

: UPDATE: Frank Barnako at CBS Marketwatch (whose column I can NEVER find in their byzantine architecture, by the way) just sniped at Denton's custom publishing. Frank quoted me starting off criticizing the effort and then praising the fact that a big brand is using the medium; I would have put that in the other order. When Frank called me as I wended my way to Better Burger in Manhattan (disappointing, I'm sorry to say) he complained first that Nick was a "charlatan" for putting up what really isn't a blog. I first gave the speech above on the great news about big-name branding and then said, sure, it could be more bloggish. I told him that Nick and Remy know it's a work in progress and they asked for suggestions. So I gave them a few (e.g., get other folks to review the films and blog that; link to some other things that are about the art of speed but don't have to do with Nike or film, like, say, a beautiful picture of a fast horse from the Belmont). That, I said, is the easy part; the thing just started yesterday and it needs to interact with the audience but couldn't until it went public. So I stand by what I said above.

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. . .

Shoes

: Critt Jarvis (no apparent relation) sends on an amazing post by Philip Jarvis, a master gunner serving in Iraq.

He tells of working with Iraqis who are paid $5 a day to fill sandbags. Most are teenagers.

There was one kid, Rami, who wore old sandals. One of his toenails was broken with a blood blister formed under it. He had several cuts on his feet from the jagged rocks. He asked for shoes. One of the soldiers who I assigned to supervise the Iraqis had recently purchased new running shoes. He gave his old ones, which were serviceable, to Rami. The kid told me he would come back the next day to work for us again.

The next day's batch of workers arrived in a large group. I began to search the ground, looking for the shoes from the day before. Rami was standing there, proud of his shoes, smiling when he saw me looking for them. I gave him thumbs up and pointed him into my work group....

Another Iraqi, Hassam-Sali, asked for shoes a few days ago. We only had one pair of shoes the other day; Rami's feet were in worse condition. I
called Monika, my wife, and explained the situation. Most of the Iraqis wear dilapidated sandals that afford little protection for their feet. The shoes that Americans give out are appreciated, and worn on a daily basis. Several workers show up wearing old desert boots or black Army boots. I have some old shoes in the basement that she mailed out. She also called her workplace, School Age Services, in Schweinfurt and started a shoe collection program.

I showed Hassam-Sami a picture of Monika and explained that it would be a few weeks before the shoes arrive. He smiled and vowed to work hard every day. He told me that I am his friend and made the symbol with his fingers. I just want him to fill sandbags and go home.

I wish that were the end of the story. But it's not:A few days later, Jarvis was waiting for the workers to enter the compound when he hjeard a hjuge explosion. A suicide bomber set himself off by the Iraqi workers, killing and injuring many Iraqis, only Iraqis.

My heart sank as I looked at the group of young Iraqis. Their eyes did not show emotion. I expected to see fear, hate, rage, or loss in their expression. They have been through so much in their lives; they just stood still waiting to see what we were going to do with them. I was told that one of the Iraqis lost a brother in the attack. They were supposed to feel safe with us overwatching them. It was such an ugly moment; unable to change the course that evil took.

None of the workers showed up at the gate today. How am I supposed to give Hassam-Sali his shoes?

In one breath, this makes the good work of Spirit of America seem at least frustrating: A few Americans want to help a few Iraqis but the Iraqis are still bombing each other.

But in the next breath, it makes the work of Spirit of America all the more vital. While Iraqis and other Middle Easterners are blowing Iraqis up, we need to show that we are here to help in any way we can, even small ways, person to person, American to Iraqi, with a pair of shoes or school materials or tools or business loans or sewing machines or, yes, even weblogs.

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. . .

Plogs

: Amazon uses the blog form to make recommendations in what it calls a plog -- a personalized blog.

Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we'll post it to your Plog.

If Amazon were smart, they'd really make it into a blog -- they'd encourage us -- buyers, users, readers, writers, whatever the hell we are -- to post to that "plog" ... and create content ... and generate traffic ... and generate sales ... and get a cut for those sales ... and end up in a big conversation about buying stuff at Amazon. If they were really smart, they'd do that.

But, instead, they merely used the reverse-chronological-order grammar of blogs to liven up their recommendations and make them more urgent and newsy. And that's good. That alone would be clever.

But I wouldn't call it a "blog" or "plog" unless I meant it, unless I went the next step to truly turn my customers into publishers. Otherwise, all Amazon is doing is trying to rub off on the heat/cool of blogs. And that's not smart. That fades fast.

Yo, Amazon, go by this.

: And, of course, I forgot to mention that the best thing to include would be links to a user/reader/writer/buyer/blogger/plogger's own book reviews both within Amazon and on a blog elsewhere. With permalinks to the Amazon reviews, blogers would link directly to them from their own blogs. Traffic grows. Conversation grows. Sales grow.

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Wiki wish

: I wish someone would put up a wiki for the collective blogosphere to fact-check, fisk, confirm -- whatever -- Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 now that it's set to be released this month.

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Assvertising

: Rent your rear.

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Vote Al Jazeera

: Blogging from the World Editors Forum quotes Hazem Saghieh, editor of Al Hayat in London:

Al Jazeera "has partly replaced and taken over the role of political parties in the Middle East. Al Jazeera is the most influential party in the Arabic World", he said. This development has been helped by technological advances and the decline of traditional political parties in the region, Saghieh explained. "Al Jazeera claims that US military destroyed its offices in Kabul and Baghdad and an Al Jazeera correspondent in Madrid was accused of having helped Arabic terrorists. That is typical for a political party", Saghieh said.

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Revenge of the youth

: A letter writer in my town's local, fuddy-duddy, weekly newspaper went onto Xanga to see what these kids today are up to and came back shouting there's trouble, right here in River City! It starts with B and ends with G and rhymes with, uh, agog!

But thanks to the wonders of online interactivity, the kids fought back. [Link via my son; I'm not including names of kids, schools, or towns in this.] First, the letter writer:

What is wrong with today’s youth? I just went on a website called zanga.com [sic] where local teens keep an on-line “personal” journal that is open for the public to read....
Every entry I’ve read by our B----- teens was full of foul language, sexual references some disgusting and the constant theme of “boredom.” This is more than teen-aged angst. This was very disturbing reading.
Are all teens today obsessed with using every four-letter word they can think of? Do they all feel life is just a bore?
And the girls seem to have no modesty at all - they throw around sexual terms and body parts/functions as if they were sailors on leave.
Parents out there: wake up. Something is wrong with our teen-agers.

I read most of the local Xanga blogs and, sure, I found some no-no words, which hardly shocks me. I also saw a few kids openly saying, in those quizzes they take, that some of them did things that are against the law and I do hope they're only bragging fictionally.

This is a hot issue around here because kids in a neighboring town were just charged with "terroristic threats and harassment" because of what they said on their web sites. Again, one can only hope that this is the fictional innanity of youth but, after Columbine, no one knows and it's right and proper that local authorities play it safe and sure. These days, parents do need to tell their kids not only not to talk to strangers and not to contemplate or do illegal acts but also not to say stupid things online.

Most of what I found on the blogs was not frightening; it was alternately charming or boring about boredom. This lady assumes all kids are bad because she doesn't like what a few of them say. Man, some things never change, eh?

But what's really entertaining are the comments attached to that letter on the paper's own site, with teens in town giving her what for. A few excerpts:

: This new medium for children to express their opinions, the Internet, may open their words up to others, but it is no different than any other diary. I'm sorry that you feel that teenagers today are appalling in their behavior, but maybe one day you will realize that we are not troubled; we are simply growing up.

: No matter how hard you try, there will be lots of anger and frustration in teens. It's called puberty. I don't know about everyone else, but all I've ever heard is how you can't keep your feelings locked up inside of you, and how you have to let them out somehow. Well, if you tell your parents they will get upset. So much for that. You can tell your friends, they'll understand. But where can you tell something to your close friends and other been-there-done-that teens that no one else will have to hear things that you rather keep to your circle of friends?
Thus, the xanga was discovered.
Stop sending mixed signals. We have to let our feelings out. ALL of them. For some people, that means cursing. You could have them get that curse out of them to a responce of sympathy and soothing help, or let that anger burn inside until it bubbles out into rage like a volcano.

: Yes, we are bored, and that is because in B-------, there is NOTHING TO DO!! Our township is filled to the brim with fake rich people, who spend money on new parks, not movie theaters and such. Its our parents fault. If they actually cared about what went on our xangas (which they dont) they wouldnt do something by building another park, where land will just get wasted.

I agree with that. In my town, they're spending a fortune on the small portion of the population that plays soccer and we're not doing enough for the rest. It's the holy grail of open space that's paved and lit and littered and sweaty. Don't get me started...

: And, just to tell you, our life is quite boring. We get up early every day, go to school for 6 hours, come home, do homework until we have some special activity to do, eat dinner, do more homework, and go to bed. On weekends we have the choice of sitting at home and doing nothing, or going to the very few places where we can be with our friends. Our town has nothing that us kids can do, so we have to travel to, say the Mall in B------- to watch movies or go shopping.
Nothing is wrong with teen-agers. They just need something to do, and our town certainly doesnt help this.

Can't say my teen years were much different, were yours?

: I understand that you may be shocked that teenagers in B------- do curse, and go through the same feelings that other people "outside the bubble" may feel. Xangas, if anything, bring people together. People who may not talk that much in school might get to know each other because they subscribe to the other's xanga. Would you really want to break those new friendships because a few feel that they are unsuitable? I know I sure wouldn't.

: Xanga is our way of expressing ourselves, obviously you see no harm in expressing yourself by writing an editorial for the newspaper, so how is that any different?

: About the sailor talk...Parents say it in front of us...If they can cuss in front of us and not see anything wrong with it...why can't kids say the same things...except in text. Our parents are to blame for our foul Mouths.

: My mother occasionally reads my xanga and my friends, but she never comments or attacks any of us. she respects my privacy and right to express how I feel as long as I am not hurting others. You are attacking people. And personally I think you are a little too old to be involved in xanga.

Most amusing: One commenter pointed to the letter-writer's own son's blog, where he writes:

HAHAHAHAH finally my mom got rid of her xanga and will leave mine alone

Puberty is hard. Parenting is hard. Always has been, always will be. I hope -- hope -- that kids writing what they think and interacting with each other helps, most of the time. Time will tell. But judging by the articulate, passionate posts I just quoted, the kids win.

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New Kurdish blog

: Here's a new Kurdish blog from Iran by Medya Ghazizadeh and, best of all, lots of photos.

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Help

: For some reason, no one can post comments. Not my doing. Anybody know what the heck could have happened???? Here's the story:
Suddenly, my blog is accepting no comments. When someone tries to submit a comment, they get this message:
"Your comment submission failed for the following reasons: You are not allowed to post comments. Please correct the error in the form below, then press POST to post your comment."
Comments are OPEN in default and in each post I try. This is happening only in my main Buzzmachine blog; tested in another blog and it works.
Made a small change in comment configuration and rebuilt to try to fix it; didn't work.
I changed nothing on the server.
However, last night, my host (Hosting Matters) went down and I believe that happened just as I was closing comments on ONE POST (a very old one) to deal with a comment spammer.
Help! What can I do?

: UPDATE: Just fixed it. When banning a comment spammer last night, I managed to submit a blank line to the banned IP list -- thus, everyone was banned. Thus, the silence.
They should all be so easy.

Comments open again. But all of you who thought, "Oh, man, I guess I went too far and he's banned me" ...

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