Daily Archives: February 15, 2005

Very Interesting News from Fallujah

Roger Simon has a report about the success of the battle of Fallujah and the interesting intel it uncovered, including the involvement of Syria and Iran.

Obviously stuff you won’t hear on the news. Covering only wire stories of car bombs is easier, and there’s the added benefit of making the military look inept.

Blogs – Media’s Elevator

Revolutionary advancements in technology are rarely adopted cleanly and swiftly into society. Sometimes cost is a prohibiting factor. Where cost isn’t a factor, adoption or acceptance is oftentimes hindered by skepticism and fear since the advancement is replacing or modifying something that has been considered tried, tested and “true”. It is only after acceptance has been achieved with a small number of vanguards, who are able to show the rest that the new way is a better way, that the advancement becomes part of mainstream society.

You don’t usually hear about the elevator in discussions about dramatic technological advances on society. We take them for granted today, yet they existed for years before people would ride them. Perfectly good elevators sat unused as people climbed the stairs. It was only when people saw that the few who started using them didn’t fall to their deaths, did they gain widespread acceptance.

Today we sit on the edge of a media revolution. While the Wall Street Journal and others still warn of the long fall down the elevator shaft, more and more people and media institutions are starting to realize that there may be a better way than only having a relatively small number of “reporters” collecting and reporting the news on T.V. and in newspapers. I predict in years to come (probably not that many) people will look back and chuckle at the same skepticism we’re showing towards the blogosphere today. Do we know where the blogosphere will take us? No. After all, not many folks contemplated that elevators would lead to the rise (literally – through vertical expansion) of modern cities. But I don’t think were going to fall down the shaft either.

Chickendoves

A great response to the chickenhawk arguement by Doug Kern. Here’s a snippet, but you should read it all:

Military service is also an excellent sincerity check for peaceniks who have belatedly discovered the joys of protecting innocent Muslims. Many of us suspicious-minded pro-war types can’t help but notice that many war protestors didn’t lose much sleep over the lives of Iraqis and Iranians when Saddam Hussein was slaughtering both. And back when the kum-ba-yah set admitted to resenting our action in Afghanistan, they fretted over the fate of Afghanis whom they were more than happy to entrust to the tender ministrations of the Taliban before 9/11. And what about our defense of Muslims during our Bosnian action? If, chickendove, you’ve developed a strange new concern for the fate of Muslims worldwide, take notice: the one military in the entire world that has taken up arms in the last fifty years to defend Muslim life is the American military. Feel like enlisting yet? Or is your Ph.D. proof enough of how gosh darn much you care?

mm-5