Rice Testimony

I'm going to reserve judgment right now on whether or not the Bush administration had actionable warning on imminent attacks on U.S. soil. Some are praising Condoleeza Rice as if she passed some sort of test with flying colors. Others are calling for perjury charges.

For me, it's tough to imagine that a Presidential daily briefing memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside United States" couldn't serve as adequate warning, but Rice claimed the content of the memo presented nothing new. I guess I'll just have to defer judgment until the memo is declassified.

Citizen Blogger

Last July in my Online Spin column, I wrote a bit about local blogging and how it can fill gaping holes in our news coverage. Those gaping holes still exist, but they're slowly being filled by bloggers. Some of the aggregation tools I mentioned in my article are starting to emerge - RSS readers are starting to move into the mainstream. We can only hope that Microsoft builds RSS into Outlook. Kinja is being described by some as RSS with training wheels but it's valuable nonetheless. I can only hope that the blog movement continues to flourish.

It's no secret that the mainstream media outlets in the U.S. have a credibility problem. I've discussed in the past how increased competition has steered the mainstream media toward emphasizing scoops over substance. Thankfully, blogs are giving us information that is essentially unfiltered. I'm thriving on this stuff right now, taking breaks during lunch and after work to cruise some of my favorite blogs to gather information about anything and everything - especially the war in Iraq.

CNN can give me a somewhat sanitized version of what is transpiring on the ground in Iraq. It also doesn't give me much in the way of opinions of Iraqi citizens or coalition soldiers in Iraq today. Blogs give me that, and in doing so give me valuable information that help me make responsible choices as a citizen of a democratic society. I can't help but think that all of us should blog for at least an hour a day - write about what we think, what we feel and most importantly, what we witness first-hand.

If for some reason, you haven't seen how this phenomenon is manifesting itself in Iraq, please check out the sites of some of the Iraqi bloggers. There's a great diversity of opinion out there. I'm digesting as much of it as I possibly can. And it's great to see this information out there without filtering or agenda-setting that's so prevalent among the mainstream news media.

Start here, or here, or here. Follow links to other Iraqi blogs. Read it all - these people have assumed great personal risk to bring you this information about what's going on in their corner of the world.

NYTimes: A Heretical View of File Sharing

According to this article in the NYTimes (registration required), two economists claim that file sharing has a negligible effect on record sales.

The RIAA's response? They fault the study for relying on survey data, saying essentially that people can't be trusted to tell the truth in such matters. The RIAA adds that people who agree to have their behavior monitored are not representative of the population they're after. In short, thanks for trying, but there's no reliable way to get data on file traders. How convenient.

New York Needs Robotic Parking Garages

Check out this article in Slate. I think some rich entrepreneur would make serious money over the long haul by bringing a couple of these to New York City. He'll have a customer in me.

Over the years, I've parked in two garages in the city. Both are terrible at doing two simple things: Getting the car out when I need it and keeping the car in nice shape.

Speaking of keeping the car in nice shape, the attendents at the garage I'm currently in (East End Garage Corp) have many strikes against them. They seriously screwed up my 1985 Porsche by banging it into a support pole. (The garage is underground.) When I confronted them about the huge dent in my front fender, they claimed they didn't cause the damage. I had to point out the black paint from my car on their support pole and the white paint from their support pole on my car before they admitted responsibility. On top of that, it took them well over a month to fix the damage to my car. I had it fixed and then gave the car back to my father, who had sold it to me a year prior.

The East End Garage folk are doing no better with my 2002 Corvette. I've noticed scuffs and scratches all over the car. Most recently, they caused two giant scuffs on the front of the car, which look like they've been caused by the ass-end of an SUV backing over the front of the car. I've pointed this out to the garage manager, who seems to want to keep his distance from me lately.

Bring on the robots.