Flyover Country

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From an article in TNR:

[John] Kerry remains furious about Tora Bora today. “They declared Osama bin Laden the world’s number-one criminal, and went out boldly proclaiming, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ and talking about the dangers of Al Qaeda,” he told me recently. “And when they had an opportunity to completely, not only decapitate it, but probably to leave it with the minuscule, last portion of its tail, they never showed up.” His anger is justified. Bin Laden was clearly at Tora Bora, and sending so few troops was indeed a major failure.

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The link in question

my response:

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“We’re entitled to our own opinions, we’re not entitled to our own facts.”

Al Franken is awesome. Simple as that.

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…I felt that I was trying to describe an unthinkable present and I actually feel that science fiction’s best use today is the exploration of contemporary reality rather than any attempt to predict where we are going…The best thing you can do with science today is use it to explore the present. Earth is the alien planet now.

—William Gibson in an interview on CNN, August 26, 1997.

Wikipedia:

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, with about 100 pages of Pattern Recognition written, Gibson had to re-write the main character’s backstory, which had been suddenly rendered implausible; he called it “the strangest experience I’ve ever had with a piece of fiction.” He saw the attacks as a nodal point in history, “an experience out of culture”, and “in some ways… the true beginning of the 21st century.” He is noted as one of the first novelists to use the attacks to inform his writing. Examination of cultural changes in post-September 11 America, including a resurgent tribalism and the “infantilization of society”, became a prominent theme of Gibson’s work.

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Captain Blinky has decided to express an opinion about the conflict in Afghanistan. Does anyone know if he ever compensated the US government for all the planes he crashed back in the day?

Hours before the speech, Senator John McCain of Arizona expressed support for sending more troops to Afghanistan but said he opposed a timetable. “Dates for withdrawal are dictated by conditions,” Mr. McCain, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “The way that you win wars is to break the enemy’s will, not to announce dates that you are leaving.”

McCain makes a great point here, considering how well this strategy worked for the US in the Vietnam War. Can you imagine where we’d be right now if he’d won last November? Horrifying thought.

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The Twitterati got all hot and bothered earlier today when they found out MINUTES BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE that Tiger Woods was in a car accident.

This is seen as some sort of validation of the awesome amazingness of the “real-time web.” Scoble was, predictably, on hand to pimp his Twitter lists. Devin Coldewey was, predictably, the rational wet blanket interrupting everyone else’s masturbatory reverie.

Personally, I don’t have any particular issue with the whole real time web thing, and find it vaguely interesting. My only major complaint with the TechCrunch goings-on is the excitement over a non-story for the sole reason that it gives a small group another opportunity to talk about themselves and how they’re somehow replacing the traditional media.

Say what you will about the newspaper-based tradmed, but at least they’re decent enough to confine their self-referential wanking to the op-ed page. TechCrunch, in contrast, is pure op-ed in the guise of legitimate journalism. Sort of like Fox News.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/27/internet-twitter-tiger-woods/

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From David Plouffe in The Audacity to Win:

There have been plenty of organizations that thrive, for a time at least, under leaders who yell and scream and fly off the handle and are propelled forward by a culture of intimidation and even fear. But I believe that, ultimately, organizations are collectives of human beings. They will perform best and make their greatest achievements when there is clarity, calmness, conviction, and collegiality throughout the ranks.

The 2008 Obama campaign may be one of the best-run Presidential campaigns in history, and a lot of it comes down to attitudes like Plouffe’s. There’s a lot here that new managers in the software industry can and should learn from. Corporations, just like political campaigns and soylent green, are made of people.

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VT100 with gradients and a whole lot of attitude. TOTALLY EXTREME!

Looks neat, but good luck using that on an airplane.

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