In the span of one week, I've been to five airports (EWR, DFW, PHX, ORD, and LGA), and had to pass through security at four (all but DFW), and I'm happy to report that the security process was actually pleasant! Staff was courteous and efficient at every airport I went to. There was always a manager overseeing the operations. Directions were clear and consistent. And though the process was still onerous: laptops need to be removed from bags and x-rayed separately, shoes and belts removed (the man ahead of me at LGA looked as if he were doing a strip show, removing his jacket, belt, and shoes before being allowed through), there was a comforting consistency in the routine no matter where I was. Another plus -- whether due to war or process improvements I can't say -- was the lack of lines. In every airport I was through security in under ten minutes. Add to that the ease of check-in (e-ticket boarding passes printed out from airport kiosks and twice from my home printer!) and the experience was as good as you can expect these days.
Bryan's created a really cool application called IndyJunior which takes an XML file of latitudes and longitudes and creates a Flash map of one's travels. I've set mine up here: www.megnut.com/travels.asp so you can watch me crisscross the continent and the Atlantic over the next few months. Lest you think I'll wear myself out with all this, I've sworn off travel after June and will go awondering no more. At least until fall. Really. I swear!
I've posted my keynote from the 2003 Midwestern Conference on Film, Language, and Literature. It's a 250 KB PowerPoint document entitled, "The Weblog Revolution: How technology and amateurs are changing the way we communicate." My slides tend to be pretty bland and don't cover a lot of the talk, but I guess you'll get the gist, if you're interested. I'll try to get an HTML version online later today, but for now I'm just going to go listen to some other people speak for a while. I'm happy to have it over with!
Update: Here's the HTML version. It's generated straight from PowerPoint, so it's pretty ugly, but you, again, will get the idea of the presentation.
Coming to you live from LGA via the Sidekick, with not much to say except I wanted to try this out and airport CNN is driving me crazy. It is so full of non-news and rife with "supposedly" and "maybe" and "perhaps". Also too omnipresent is the American smile while reporting about things like the "bunker buster," one of America's largest bombs. Yippee! I'll be happy when this bout of travel is complete and I can never watch CNN again.
Huh, weird. This didn't actually publish properly, hence its late arrival. But it did post to MT. Must be something odd with MT, the Sidekick, and page reloading? Any one?
Alas, shortly after I arrived in Arizona a pox fell upon the web server and it was down and out for a couple of days, allowing none of the exciting reporting from the road that I'd thought about providing. It came back up in time for me to spend a disconnected day on the plane flying back to New York City, because that's how these things work.
During a conversation at PC Forum about the difficulties of using technology, especially as it related to configuring email clients, this thought occurred to me: why can't my email client just ask me, "What address would you like to use?" and then look up the POP or IMAP info from the MX record and save it? Why does it make me type it in, espcially if I have an active Internet connection? It could say, "What address do you want:" and then "What's the username:" and "What's the password:" and then it'd be done. Even the most novice user should be able to do that. Of course, that still leaves the user to enter his/her SMTP info, but that's a problem to solve for another day...
Update: this sounds like it won't work, more later. Flying to Chicago now.
What's going on with UPS these days? Last year they launched an ad campaign in which they started referring to themselves as "brown" and changed their tagline to What can brown do for you?. This seemed odd to me, since no one I know ever referred to UPS as "brown". Though we associate the color brown with the brand UPS, I don't understand the need to make it so explicit. When Federal Express changed to FedEx, it made a little more sense because that's what everyone called them. But I feel like with this brown business, I have to conciously make an association between the spoken-word "brown" and UPS. This seems silly since I already have good associations with UPS (UPS = good shipping, UPS = nice delivery man in SF who always said hello, etc.) and when someone asks "What can brown do for you?" I think, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Now they've launched a new logo as well. It's got all the punch of a dot-com logo circa 1999 and none of the nice clean class embodied by the original. The Martin Agency is behind both of these campaigns (according to the two linked articles, UPS invested $45 million on the ads and will spend $20 million on the rebranding) and I really wonder what the heck they're thinking. Surely you can modernize a brand without confusing the customer, can't you?
Still in the throes of sickness (bronchitis is my guess but dr. was unavailable to confirm for me before my departure, maybe it's the Consumption!), I've travelled to the warm, dry climate of Scottsdale, AZ to partake of the cure. That cure being PC Forum, though I'm sure the 85° will also help my coughing. Once again I'm reminded of two things: 1) I'm an idiot, I didn't bring my camera; 2) I love the desert, and the soaring orange mountains that ring the city. I wish I could stay for a week and do some hiking. I think I've got some desert rat in me.
W. Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd speaking yesterday on The Arrogance of Power:
We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat UN Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.
A weblog from Baghdad called Where is Raed? writing about the war. Related: Is the Baghdad Blogger for real? [via Scripting.com]
From the BBC, In pictures: War on Iraq begins.
There's a surprisingly good article from USA Today about the US plan to track and kill Saddam Hussein using special forces. Of note was this quote:
Last year, Bush directed the CIA to undertake a covert mission to topple Saddam and, if the operatives believed their lives were in danger, to kill him.
I hadn't heard about this, was the mission carried out?
I'm home sick today, so no commentary here, just some links to some other opinions:
Rick Bruner: So Let's Have a War Already
Jason Kottke: The war
Gavin Sheridan: On War - and why it is happening
Also Russian Expert Predicts 500,000 Iraqi Dead in War Designed To Test Weapons.
We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.
From Robin Cook's resignation speech in the UK House of Commons yesterday. Here's the full text. I recommend you watch the video (RealAudio). It's 11 1/2 minutes long and he makes some excellent points. It's hard to imagine an American politician taking such a stand, or possessing such eloquence.
I've been avoiding making a direct post about my opinion on the upcoming Iraq war because I've felt it's been so muddled and unclear. I've been spending a tremendous amount of time thinking about it, and reading as much as I can. Since megnut serves not only as a space for me to share my thoughts but also as a repository for them for my future reference, I'm going to attempt to organize everything I've been thinking into some sort of post for my own sake. (Hi Meg from the future, checking in to see what Meg of 2003 thought about the Iraq situation!)
Of this I am certain:
Of this I am also certain:
And so where do I stand? I am in support of enforcing the UN resolution to disarm Saddam Hussein, and I support a UN-authorized military action, if that is what is required, though I'd prefer a peaceful inspections process. I would like to see a regime change in Iraq. I would be very happy if some kind of representative government could develop after Hussein is removed from power. But I'm uncomfortable with the idea of America unilaterally removing someone from power. And I am very disturbed by the approach the American government has taken to achieve its goals.
Last night President Bush once again invoked the Al Queda/Iraq connection, for which we have seen no evidence. So either a) the evidence exists but the US refuses to share it even with the Security Council of the United Nations or b) President Bush went on television last night and lied to the American people.
I am disgusted by the flip-flop reasoning of the Bush administration, by their refusal to provide sufficient evidence for their actions, by their continued polarization of the situation, and their blatant disrespect for the intelligence of the American population, and the world.
I feel lucky to have lived in the brief time of incredible prosperity and relative peace prior to September 11, 2001. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and cease fires in global hot spots like Northern Ireland and Israel, I thought we might have moved into humanity's post-war period (sort of like Star Trek's Federation of Planets). Boy was I naïve. But I'd still like to believe that there are other ways of dealing with conflicts, and that we're slowly moving towards alternative methods of doing so (in this case diplomacy, international coalitions, and inspections), with war as the last resort.
But the American government is determined to forge another course. Their justifications for an imminent attack of Iraq are hypocritical and unsubstantiated, and only enforce the impression that America is a bullying hyperpower bent on running the world how it sees fit. This war is not the last resort, it is a failure of diplomacy. Mr. Bush, you could have convinced me to support you, but you didn't. Instead, you lied and smirked and condescended. Your actions make me ashamed to be American.
Also, I suppose now we should change the name of the Lafayette Project to the Freedom Project to demonstrate our support for the USA and our utter distain for all things French.
While you're out getting drunk tonight in homage to a dead Britishman (Patrick was born in Britian and kidnapped by Irish raiders), here are a few facts about St. Patrick to keep in mind. I am celebrating today by wearing green shoes.
From the New York Times: Letters to the Editor regarding the passage of the "partial-birth" abortion ban in the Senate last week.
Lots of interesting email and links over the weekend regarding Thursday's post about targeting journalists in Iraq. Based on everything I've received, my opinion is that the US isn't specifically targeting journalists (writes a former member of the US Armed Forces, "By the Rules of Engagement, the U.S. could never legally fire upon journalists of any nation, if they knew they were journalists,") they are warning journalists that if they aren't embedded with US troops, they risk being fired upon because it's difficult to distinguish between a "friendly" satellite transmissions and one from the enemy. From the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Spoon-feeding the press article:
[T]he Pentagon recently issued a set of rules for war coverage in the looming campaign against Iraq that call for the "embedding" of approximately 500 reporters with U.S. troops. Immediately, the new regulations were hailed as a victory by mainstream media. But when you look at what the rules really say, the picture isn't so pretty.
"On paper it looks like a considerable improvement," Schanberg said. "For example, there's no auto review of copy by the military." On closer inspection, however, Schanberg found reasons for concern. All reporters "embedded" with U.S. troops must sign a contract agreeing to the Pentagon's rules governing coverage. Included in the document is a clause dictating what kinds of information reporters can and cannot detail. Journalists can be precluded from reporting certain "sensitive" information according to the military commander's discretion.
Via email from a US journalist in Kuwait:
I was at a briefing yesterday at which the U.S. military briefers made it very clear that any "unilaterals" (i.e. journalists who aren't embedded) who get ahead of the U.S. Army or mixed among it risk being shot or bombed or vaporized in one of the infinite fashions available to the U.S. Army, Air Force and Marines. Not because we are journalists, but because we would be unidentified operators in a warzone. Sounds like a joke, but the practice in a warzone is shoot-first-ask-questions-later.
So, reporters who will be embedded with the troops will be "safer" than those that venture off on their own. What they can report may also be restricted, and their credentials can be revoked by the Pentagon at any time, for any reason. Those who chose not to be embedded risk being "targeted down" simply because of the difficulty in distinguishing who they are, not because the US is trying to kill independent journalists. Kate Adie says she is, "enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent on-the-spot reporting, as the war occurs," and I agree. It sounds like the government wants to keep very tight control on the information coming out of Iraq. Sadly, with the Bush government, it's standard procedure.
Other links:
Maciej is into Day 4 of French Week over at Idle Words and I don't know which post to recommend: the crêpes? The cheese? The reasons to love France? Or 20th century French history? Actually, every one really great, so just go read them all.
Gavin's got a post with a partial transcript from an Irish radio show (also a link to download the entire show in Real Audio) in which Kate Adie (the BBC's chief news correspondent) makes some amazing statements regarding censorship of the American press in Iraq and Pentagon warning that reporters may be fired upon:
I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks - that is the television signals out of... Baghdad, for example - were detected by any planes ...electronic media... mediums, of the military above Baghdad... they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists...
I haven't heard anything like this in the US media. Is this true they intend to fire upon the press? And are they prohibiting reporters who are disapproving of the war? I mean, I really find this hard to believe.
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