A work friend just commented:

"It at least left me with the feeling that I needed to know more about the Iliad. So in that respect it was successful."

She's off to buy herself a copy of the Iliad. That's a good thing.

The guys at NASA clearly have a major Star Wars thing going on. 

Makes sense, I guess. If you're a real life space monkey, why wouldn't you enjoy movies about the fictional kind?

But it's still entertaining to see them taking the homage this far:

I take it all back. 

Even after I ranted at length and publicly reviled them in this post, the patient and concerned Blogger support team emailed me out of the blue (on Sunday afternoon!). After a very polite apology, the support guy proposed a detailed solution to the problems I've been enjoying since that little blogjacking episode a few months back.

No time to try the suggested solution at the moment, but it's nice to know that they're out there listening. More news later, once I've had a chance to try out the tweaks.  In the meantime, thanks Eric!

Now I feel kind of bad about being so grumpy in my earlier rant.  But I'm also feeling very good about my decision to stick with Blogger as my engine of choice.  This is the kind of thing that makes loyalty to one supplier worthwhile.

[Original rant courtesy of my brother, Gerard]

Britain's Imperial War Museum at Duxford is promoting an "Exclusive offer for Normandy Veterans" at their upcoming D-Day commemoration.

From their website:

"Each veteran and guest would have access to a sumptuous private marquee with seating enclosure on the flight-line close to the Control Tower, access to the flight-line walk, complimentary souvenir programme and private cloakroom facilities within the enclosure."

The catch?  The Museum is "pleased to be able to offer" the special rate of eight pounds sterling for any veterans wanting to attend. That's a discount of three whole pounds (approx. $6 Canadian) off the standard senior citizens rate.

That's right - the very people whose valiant service this anniversary air show is supposed to be commemorating have to pay eight sodding quid to get in.

"The Museum is inviting all D-Day veterans to join them in paying tribute to those that took part in the Normandy campaign by attending the D-Day Anniversary Air Show on Sunday 6 June at a special reduced rate."

Paying to pay tribute to yourselves?

As Gerard says: "If this bothers you, as it does me, please write and ask them to reduce the entrance charge to zero": duxford@iwm.org.uk

In other news: WWII veterans are also being refused access to parts of Normandy this June, due to the security needs of that great and mighty warrior, Governor G.W. Bush, hero of the Texas Air National Guard, staunchly defending his country against all those Viet Cong bombers.

Bonus link: Bush's Top 10 Lies About His Military Service

Frank has an excellent image to show you, here. Make sure you read the whole label.

Seen on tonight's streetcar ride...

There's a roofing contractor's office on the south side of Queen East somewhere around Carlaw Avenue.  The boss must have been in when I was passing earlier this evening.  I looked up from my paper just in time to see a gold-coloured Jag XK8 sitting in the driveway.

On the vanity license plate:

IROF4YOU

I'm sorry? You "ROF" for me?

What, you Roll On the Floor for me?

Ride Over Ferrets?

Ring Of Fire?

[credit to my brother Gerard for both the link and the headline]

Earlier today, the UK's Financial Times ran a story about maverick Ryanair's fight with the Belgian airport authorities.  The original version of the story has, sadly, been taken down and replaced with a sanitized version.

Here's how the version currently up on the FT's site opens:

Ryanair says it won't pay back state subsidies
By Kevin Done, Aerospace Correspondent

Ryanair is refusing to pay back alleged state subsidies arising from its operations at Belgium's Charleroi airport.

Michael O'Leary, Ryanair chief executive, said on Tuesday that the Belgian authorities had written to the airline demanding the repayment of around 3m[Euros].

Mr O'Leary said the company had written back making clear it did not intend to repay the money.

If you run this Google search, however, you'll see that the original, much more...um...colourful version is still sitting in Google's cache.  Here's the opening lines from the unsanitized version:

Ryanair refuses to repay 3m state aid
By Kevin Done, Aerospace Correspondent

Ryanair is refusing to pay back alleged state subsidies arising from the low-cost carrier's operations at Belgium's Charleroi airport.

Michael O'Leary, Ryanair chief executive, said the Belgian authorities had written to the airline demanding the repayment of about 3m[Euros].

"We have written back to say 'fuck off'," he said yesterday.

I can just see the look on the flack's face...

I've absolutely no issue with the principle behind the Save The Internet Coalition site, the latest progeny of the GeekPAC initiative.  Makes damn good sense in so many ways, and needs doing. Heck, I'll even sign the petition.

I do, however, have a problem with the U.S.-centricity of the thing.  OK, I'll grant that many of the worst threats to the survival of the 'Net as a commons are in the machinations of the U.S. government.  And, sure, America has a greater share of concerned Internet geeks than anywhere else in the world. 

But WTF?

Isn't it supposed to be a World Wide Web?

There are, no doubt, practical reasons why they've chosen to limit this thing to "...the US portion of the Internet...", but I still find it frustrating to feel as if I'm being sidelined by an accident of geography. 

The page on S.T.I.C. Ideals makes it very clear that I'm not welcome:

Membership in the Save The Internet Coalition is open to any person subscribing to the following principles and when legal:

1. You must be over the age of 18 and a resident of the United States. Pegistered [sic] Voters Preferred.

This just feels wrong. OK, so their Action Plan is built around the founders' knowledge of the U.S. Congress and Senate.  But it strikes me that imposing this parochial limit on the scope of the proposed solution misses two points:

a. the commons belongs to all of us, not just residents of the U.S., and;
b. as the threats to the Internet are global, so too should any proposed plan of redress.

This is an unfair analogy, but a plan to save the 'Net that is only open to Americans, is just a tiny bit like a plan to "fix" Iraq without the rest of the world's support.

Again - I'm sure the people behind this mean well, and are only limiting their initiative to the U.S. for all sorts of perfectly good reasons, but it just doesn't make sense. 

It's my Internet too.  And yours.

If we're going to save it from the grasping hands of governments (and government-sanctioned organizations) everywhere, we should all have a part in its defense.

Maybe they want a Canadian-resident affiliate?  Now there's an idea. Perhaps I'll volunteer to spearhead the Canadian arm.

Oh, and while I'm at it, maybe I should offer to copy-edit the text.  It's a bit...um...rough.

[UPDATE: So I emailed Jeff Gerhardt, one of the drivers of the S.T.I.C. initiative.  I was sort of right, I guess - there is one very simple reason why this whole thing is U.S.-centric. 

Jeff: "US campaign finance laws would prohibit us from taking money from people who are not citizens or at least legal residents. It is that simple and clear cut."

Well, duh.  Of course.

Doesn't alter the fact that the issues here have impact on all users of the Internet, though - so I'm going to follow Jeff's advice:

"What someone out side the US could do is inform your government of the wrongs and how you would expect your country not to follow this path. Further, please inform everyone from the US you come in contact with that it is imperative that they as US voters act."]

Doc Searls pointed to a note on Anthony Rickey's blog about the original home of the wonderful Volokh Conspiracy getting blogjacked by a Google-bombing SEO blogsquatter.

Same thing happened to me earlier this year - I was blogsquatted by some lowlife scumwad calling himself "SEO Dave". This totally sucked, and still does.

Google/Blogger were eventually able to take back the Blog*spot domain I used to own, but all the old content had been hosed. So I now have  "llareggolb.blogspot.com" back, but the only thing there is a single post redirecting people to my current domain, here.

The weirdest thing about this blogsquatting was that, at the time, the #1 Google result for my own name was pointing to this "SEO Dave" wanker. Really rather unpleasantly scary.

And the really, really stupid thing about all this is the way it happened:

1. After a few years of footling around and easing into this thing, I finally got round to switching my Blog*spot blog to a "real" domain: michaelocc.com.

2. I changed the publishing preferences in Blogger to switch things to FTP to my area of the shared co-op server on which my domain was going to live, away from the previous Blog*spot settings.

3. I ran a couple of tests to see that everything worked, then tried to switch things back, temporarily, so that I could post a final re-direct message to the old blog.

4. Doh! Blogger wouldn't let me switch back - stating that the Blogspot domain "llareggolb.blogspot.com" (my own one) was already in use. Yes - it was in use by me, you fools - fifteen minutes ago.  Give it back!

5. Spent a few hours and several messages to Blogger support trying to figure this out. No response.

6. Screw it.

7. Carried on blogging at new site regardless, but posted another message to Blogger's support forum, pleading for help.

8. Months later, accidentally discovered the old blog site had been hijacked.

9. Several weeks and many more messages to Blogger support later...

10. They reset llareggolb.blogspot.com so that it now shows up in my list of owned blogs, but none of the archive content could be found. Bollocks.

For the record, the last round of dialogue with Blogger Support (they don't call it "BS" for nothing) went like this:

BS: llareggolb is now yours again- log into your Blogger account and you'll see it in your blog list. Let us know if you need any further assistance.

ME: Thanks, that feels better. Good job. But have you any idea:

a.  what happened (and how)?
b.  where all my content went?

I'm still a bit bothered about this for a number of reasons.  Having moved my blog to a hosted FTP-able site, I don't think I can now switch back and re-publish all my old stuff to the old llareggolb domain.  But there's a lot of Googletracks out there pointing to the old llareggolb stuff. How do I get my old content back up to the llareggolb site?  Or set a redirect or something?  [... further polite supplications ...] Thanks in advance.

BS: I asked around, and it seems that when a blog switches from Blog*Spot to ftp publishing, its subdomain goes back to the wild... Your content went with you to the new ftp site, and I'm assuming the dude deleted and/or republished with new content at the old subdomain.

Thanks for nothing.

Good thing I'd already ported the entire archive across to my new blog - so no actual content was lost.

The irritating coda to this, however, is that my blog has been rendered essentially unsearchable.

As I often use this blog as a kind of giant online scrapbook, a personal catalogue of thoughts-in-progress, links I like, etc.; this inability to search is genuinely frustrating.  I can Google for anything on my blog prior to the switchover, the links all pointing deep into the archives of the old site (they still exist out there, somewhere in GoogleLand - but I'm buggered if I can access them directly. The Google string: [michael o'connor clarke doc searls], for example, still brings up this (complete with the hideous old template) even though that content was long since ported across to here).

Googling for anything since I switched, however, draws a blank. 

Getting Google to recognize and index the content on my site has proven, so far, impossible.  Their index shows that michaelocc.com exists, but they studiously ignore anything posted here since I stopped paying them for an ad-free Blog*spot site, while continuing to merrily direct people to anything on the old site (now once again carrying banner ads, of course).  Grrrrr...

I'm sure there are simple, technical reasons for this and equally simple, technical ways to fix it - but I'm simply not techie enough to be able to figure it out for myself. 

That, of course, is the role of my blog vendor's technical support department.  Alas - the tech support at Blogger, even with all of Google's millions behind it, continues to suck. A sparse handful of over-worked clueholders surrounded by a host of RTFMers.

On which note - is Google alone among the world's largest software companies in not having a clearly available customer support department?

Seriously: go to the Google "Contact Us" page. No customer help desk listed. Sure, you can post to the User Support Discussion Forum -- if you want to consign your problem to the purgatory of disregard -- but where's the help desk?  Do Google corporate clients and AdWords customers have a different experience? 

(BTW: I have one of the coveted early Gmail accounts - happy to say that the web UI does indeed include contact info for their Gmail support team. Still wondering what the deal is with their main engine, though...)

Instead of all this whining, I guess I should just get down to figuring out how to put a search box back on my site, using Atomz or something.  But given the omniscience of Google, adding a search box to a Blogger-based blog seems kind of redundant, really - doesn't it? Or it would do, if the darn thing worked the way it's supposed to.

</rant>

[UPDATE: This is all now fixed.  Doc pointed to my rant.  Google responded.  Eric Case in their Blogger Support squad held my hand and coached me through fixing the problem.  It's all better now and I take back all the nasty things I said].

Searching for something in the archives (a brutally difficult exercise - on which point, more later), I turned up this post from a little over a year ago. Just as true this year as it was back then, so I thought I'd dust it off and re-post (slightly edited) just for my own amusement...

###

I've completely missed the fact, once again, that last March 1st was my blogiversary.

Of course, not one of you miserable sodders sent me any kind of a "Happy Blogday" message or anything either.

And yet I find myself strangely unmoved by this...

Taking the glass-half-full POV, I'm choosing to see this non-event for what it really is: an epoch-defining moment of mass Collaborative IndifferenceTM on a scale not seen before.

Never in the field of human conflict was so little cared about not much by so many.

Indeed, I think we can safely say that this was the first time in the brief history of the weblog phenomenon that the entire Blogosphere was absolutely united in not giving a rat's ass about a nodal point in this shared narrative being woven by us all.

So utterly unanimous was our apathy in this respect that, in truth, even I failed to give a stuff about the passing of what might conceivably be considered a quite extraordinarily insignificant anniversary.

If only we could harness this awesome power and put it to good use! Imagine the effect of such grand scale Collaborative Indifference directed towards the situation in Iraq, for example.

If the massed might of the American military machine could only be infected with this entirely healthy attitude of impassive lack of interest. John Abizaid could yell until he was blue in the face - not one of those U.S. squaddies would be bothered to crawl out of their bunks and head into town to kick up trouble.

I think I'm onto something here. Off to see my IP lawyer this afternoon (well, if Jeff can patent e-mail discussion groups, surely there's room for a patent on "who gives a crap"?).

Simply marvellous. Another quality sample from today's newswire:

Video B-roll via Satellite - CORRECTION: Feed time delayed to 10:15 to 10:45 a.m. EST.

HOSPITALITY PROPRIETORS ACROSS ONTARIO SUPPORT SMOKE-FREE PUBLIC AND WORK PLACES, "IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO"

Lest you think I'm just being snarky for the sake of it - this one specifically invites feedback in the last line of the advisory:

"...this release is offered for your free and unrestricted news use. Comments regarding the content and quality are welcomed."

Why, thank you. Now, where to start...?

Skipping past that rather ineptly punctuated headline, perhaps the finest point of this announcement is the fact that it is a "correction" to a version already issued at 7:00 this morning.

Why is that entertaining? Three reasons:

1. The time for the satellite feed was changed (originally 10:00 - 10:30; changed to 10:15 - 10:45).  Time that this release hit the wire: 10:45.  Excellent!

2. Further confusion is introduced through the headline referring to "EST" while the co-ordinates given in the body text quote "EDT".  Not a big problem, of course - we're only talking about synchronizing a satellite downlink here. Not like it's something that requires accurate timing or anything...

3. The "corrected" version actually introduces these and other new errors not included in the original.  For example, "bylaws" in version one becomes "bylaw's" in version two (ouch).  "Co-ordinates" becomes "co ordinates". (N.B. To be fair, I should point out that it's possible these errors were introduced at the wire service - that has happened to me in the past).

The body of the announcement is one long, tortured paragraph of clumsy sentences and seemingly random punctuation. A representative passage:

"And, while reinforcing that the health hazards associated with second-hand smoke are well known, accepted and undisputed the B-roll sends out a clear and consistent message that the fears associated with lost sales appear to be both greatly exaggerated and sensationalized. Speaking out against opinions expressed by what are felt to be minority segments from within their own industry, hospitality proprietors from across Ontario agree, that the advent of 100% smoke-free bylaws as they relate to both public and work places, is good for public health, good for business and quite simply, is the right thing to do."

My eyes are bleeding. 

The really frustrating thing is that this announcment is in support of a patently good cause. I'm all for smoke-free work places and restaurants - I have kids.  I just wish they did a better job of getting their message across.

Which leads to the final question - who "they"?

The contact info at the bottom lists one "Tom Miller, COO".  COO of what, exactly, is something we're left to figure out for ourselves.

I'm guessing it's the organization listed in the next line - "For technical information DURING the feed, please call CFA at...". But who are the CFA? 

Canadian Federation of Agriculture? Unlikely - lots of tobacco growers in Canada. 

Canadian Federation of Aromatherapists, perhaps? Wanting clearer air and un-compromised olfactory perception in order to advance their own smelly agenda...?

Canadian Forestry Association? Could the link between cigarette butts and forest fires be driving this initiative?

Or how about the Cat Fanciers' Association? Doubt it.  They seem to know where to put their apostrophes (and their Abyssinians, of course).

326,000 Google hits for "CFA Canada" (2.8 million if you drop the "Canada").  Nothing in the first five pages of results looks like it has anything to do with the anti-smoking lobby. The advisory was issued under the rubric of Cancer Care Ontario, which makes sense - but who is this shadowy lobbying group, lurking in the bluish-grey cloud at the back of the room?  Canadians for Free Air...? Canadian Fag Antagonists? ("Fag" in the British sense, natch - not the North American meaning).

OK, I'll fess up. This time I really am being unfairly snarky.  I happen to know that the CFA in question is a video production and marcoms company (whose site doesn't work in FireFox, alas), but I still can't help poking them. If I had time, it would be entertaining to give their site a thorough fisking too, just for the halibut. Here's a small sample of particularly egregious nuggets:

"CFA is seamlessly integrated to meet all of our client's communications needs." - but we're afraid that we can only handle one client at a time...

"The ability to talk to someone in Vancouver while standing in St. John's is no longer a novelty, it's a necessity." - simply not true: I know plenty of people in St. John's who are able to go for days at a time without talking to anyone in Vancouver, standing or sitting.

"CFA's 38,000 square foot logistics and fulfillment centre..." - ahh, this one clearly gives them the edge.  I've used lots of round centres for my foot logistics in the past, but never a 38,000 square one. Must be an impressive facility.

And finally:

"CFA is raising the standards of corporate communications, education, training, and ultimately, learning."

Good to hear. Starting when...?

[FWIW: I know that the whim to berate some other marcoms type for their grammatical ineptitude is guaranteed to invite well-deserved criticism and ridicule of my own rough-cornered writing.  But then, I'm not claiming to raise the standards of corporate communications here. Just hanging out, swapping snark with a few blog friends and family...]

From today's newswire:

ACE/Security Laminates(TM) Corporation "Goes Public"

Yes - those inverted commas are in the original.  But why?

Did some lawyer insist on them as a CYA measure; bracketing the casual, inexact terminology?

Whatever the intent, the effect of those incongruous quotation marks is to completely undercut the message - at least from my perspective.  I can't read that headline without picturing the two-fingers-waggling-either-side-of-the-head sardonic bunny ears.

Oh yeah, right - you really "went public". Har har.

Lynne Truss would gag.

Interesting snippet via Stu Savory - looks like those cheese-eating surrender monkeys still have a few tricks they could teach the U.S. spooks.

Cryptologists decipher a term censored in a CIA "memo" to George Bush.

Here's a meme that deserves wide propagation:

"The Family Research Council is running ads at Drudge urging people to email their Senators and Reps about gay marriage....so I did. But first I took the liberty of editing the subject line and message a bit..."

Alas, the astroturf form on the FRC's site requires a valid U.S. address before it'll spam on your behalf.  But if you're reading this, and living in the States: get over to Ed's place now and follow his lead.

(As an aside: if real people co-opt an astroturfing campaign, striking a counter-astroturf blow - what's that called? A "realgrass" campaign, perhaps?)

This is the pub that my Mum & Dad ran in Finmere, Oxfordshire for about seven years.

When they were staying with us earlier this year they told us that the pub was gutted by a fire in the thatch this last February.

A few weeks ago I came across this site, set up by Andy Boddington, a Finmere resident.  In addition to a wealth of information about Finmere and the next-door hamlet of Little Tingewick (just across the border in Buckinghamshire), the site also has photos of the fire, showing the extensive damage done to this beautiful old pub.

This is a disaster for the village.  The Red Lion was the only surviving pub serving the 400 or so locals.  There were two pubs in the village, but the King's Head closed down in 1999.  With The Red Lion gone too, the social heart of the village has been torn out.

Andy's site also features other photos of Finmere and the pub in happier days, including this shot:

That's my Mum in the front row centre, surrounded by friends, regulars, and a few family members - all set to head off to Royal Ascot for Ladies' Day, some time around 1995, at a guess. Dad and Kieron are in the back row.

Damn! we had some good times in that place.  Seven hard but very happy years for all of us. 

Nights when we had the musicians in, raising the roof with songs and laughter. Mom's roast beef sunday lunches - best in the county. The finest Guinness ever served outside the Republic. Late nights; a few fights.  Ah, the craic was mighty, as they say.

It was just a building, I know - but it still hurts.

[Clarification: Mum & Da sold The Red Lion and retired in, I think, '96 or '97. Sorry if I confused anyone. They weren't still in the pub at the time of the fire - but it's still upsetting for a' that.]

(Inspired, in part, by email conversation with two of my brothers)

Two weeks ago I spat out a brief, bitter rant suggesting that the C-in-C in DC should be prosecuted as a war criminal.

Now Michael Isikoff in Newsweek weighs in with some background.

"The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism..."

Credit to Jeneane for pointing this one out.

How, exactly, does this show up in my referrer logs? Especially when the only external link on the site goes here.

Sometimes, I wish I understood better how this stuff all works. And then I stumble over something like this, and I realise I'm kind of blissful in my ignorance...

Bug in Google's Gmail Temporarily Boosts Storage

And 98 related articles.

Guys...it's beta.

*sheesh*

The Mozilla Firefox ("The Browser, Unsucked") bookmarks list has those tiny little 16x16 icons that pop up next to certain sites - same as IE 5.0.

On my bookmarks list, the link to my own blog currently shows a little Radio UserLand cactus next to the blog name.

I'm guessing this is because the server my blog lives on has Radio running somewhere, and the little cactus is sitting in a favicon.ico file in the root.

Odd, but entertaining.  This blog actually runs on Blogger Pro - yet here I am sending these tiny little pixel adverts for one of Blogger's main competitors onto the screen of anyone who bookmarks me.

 

My cousin Adam gives Fox News a thorough fisking in his most recent blog post, laying into arch-Bushite John Gibson's latest asinine "My Word" column.

Nice.

Been playing with Gmail for a couple of weeks now (michaelocc AT gmail.com). 

Mind not made up yet on the overall experience, but I think their conversation threading thing is a mighty goodness. Not an original idea, but nicely implemented.

Meanwhile, have I mentioned recently how much my iPod completely flipping rocks? 

The only issue I have so far is one shared with many other iPod users, I guess: the battery life.  Not that it's horrible - it's just that a lot of the neater features of the software are precisely the ones reckoned to put a bigger drain on the battery. 

I don't want to turn off the EQ, thanks very much, and I just love the welcoming glow of the backlight when I brush the scrolly wheely bit.

Apple's battery life tips also suggest one should "Avoid changing tracks" as this causes the iPod to turn on and off the hard drive which eats power.  Hmmm...does this mean that the iPod's Playlists are a bad idea if you want max battery life?  That would surely suck.

One of the single most wonderful things about my iPod is the ability to keep a huge chunk of my sizeable music collection in my back pocket, and create on-the-go playlists to match my ever-changing preferences from day to day. 

Here's part of this morning's streetcar ride playlist, for example (in order):

• The Jam: I got by in time
• Rhonda Vincent: When I close my eyes
• REM: Electrolite
• Puccini/Scotto: Chi il bel sogno di doretta...
• Barenaked Ladies: Brian Wilson (Live)
• The Beatles: In my life
• Echo & The Bunnymen: The Game
• Billy Bragg: The boy done good
• Benny Goodman: Sing sing sing

As you can imagine - these tracks are scattered far and wide across the hard drive of the little podule (I'm assuming it writes a whole album in series). If the poor thing is having to thrash the disk every time it switches tracks, it's no wonder the battery life is sucking.

I managed to leave my copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves in a cab last night on the way home. 

Knickers.

If some lucky soul finds it I just hope they have as much fun with it as I had. 

Just have to try and track down another copy now, so I can finish that last chapter. Unfortunately, it's been selling out everywhere - scarcer than rocking horse droppings in this part of town.

 

Thought the first:

On the ride home this evening, reading Lynn Truss's lovely "Eats, Shoots & Leaves", the thought struck me that I should write a brace of romantic novels.

The first would be standard fare, ending with the happily requited lovers gazing into the sunset: diminuendo into a final loaded ellipsis, freighted with suggestive nudge-nudgery.

The sequel, of course, would be titled "..."

Thought the second:

Helping Charlie with his science project tonight, he wondered why pipe cleaners are called pipe cleaners. This led to a discussion in which we tried to come up with other examples of things still in everyday use whose names refer back to functions long since rendered obsolete.

I feel sure there's a big category of objects here, but both the boy and I were having a "hard-of-thinking" night and failed to come up with a single related example.

There. Told you they were small thoughts.

I posted a link (now broken) to a promising-looking URL hanging off the main Google site, below.

Well, it looks like the promise has been fulfilled - albeit at a slightly different URL. 

And it's entirely appropriate, of course, that the inaugural post to the Google Blog comes from Blogger-founder, Evan Williams.

[UPDATE: This now looks like it may have been a genuine mistake - or at least some really careless writing - on the part of the Post-Crescent editorial team.  They have posted an updated editorial plea for letters at that same link, below.  Check it out. Credit to the Post-Crescent for acknowledging the ambiguity and attempting to correct it.]

This is really quite entertainingly astonishing.

From the editorial in last Tuesday's Post-Crescent - the local rag of Appleton, Neenah and Menasha, Wisconsin:

We need more letters to achieve a balance

Letters to the editor, a staple of The Post-Crescent's Views pages, are a way to take the political and social temperature of the Valley. A well-written letter allows readers to ponder different points of view, perhaps made more poignant because the author is someone you might know. At best, they should offer a full spectrum of beliefs and topics.

Recently, though, as the race for president heats up, we've been dealing with this quandary: How can we balance the perspectives and topics of our letters when many of our submissions have been coming only from one side?

We've been getting more letters critical of President Bush than those that support him. We're not sure why, nor do we want to guess. [My emphasis] But in today's increasingly polarized political environment, we would prefer our offering to put forward a better sense of balance.

Since we depend upon you, our readers, to supply our letters, that goal can be difficult. We can't run letters that we don't have.

Finally, a myth to dispel: We don't give our letters any sort of political litmus test to determine if they make it into print. If that were so, we wouldn't run letters that take swings at who we are and what we print. If you would like to help us "balance" things out, send us a letter, make a call or punch out an e-mail. Read the handy box at the bottom of the page for more information. We'd love to hear from you.

(There's a whole world of sub-text in those inverted commas around the word "balance", don't you think?)

So come on, all you shrinking violet republican epistolarians! The Post-Crescent needs your help, dammit!

(Thanks to Oliver Willis for the link, btw).

Can I get one with a handlebar-mounted laptop?

"It is not enough, however, to identify the criminal. The United States must be isolated and rendered incapable of further crimes. I hope that America's remaining allies will be forced to desert the alliances which bind them together. I hope that the American people will repudiate resolutely the abject course on which their rulers have embarked. Finally, I hope that the peoples of the Third World will take heart from the example of the Vietnamese and join further in dismantling the American empire. It is the attempt to create empires that produces war crimes because, as the Nazis also reminded us, empires are founded on a self-righteous and deep-rooted belief in racial superiority and God-given mission. Once one believes colonial peoples to be untermenschen - 'gooks' is the American term - one has destroyed the basis of all civilized codes of conduct."

Bertrand Russell, founder and honorary president of the International War Crimes Tribunal, 1968.

The Globe & Mail this morning characterizes the "firestorm of congressional outrage" engulfing Bush as something that threatens to become a "serious domestic political problem".  This massively understates the magnitude of the issue.

The Commander in Chief of the U.S. forces should be held fully accountable in the investigations underway - if the evidence is in truth as clear as it appears to be, he should be tried as a war criminal.

Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.

An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

Source: Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War

(via Frank Paynter, via David Isenberg) 

This might be interesting an interesting URL to watch - for the diehard Googlemaniacs, anyway.