ArtLung Blog

War now According-to-Hoyle Jihad
Oh, great.

Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, a reformist who, as the grand sheik of Al Azhar University, was one of the first clerics to condemn the September 11 attacks and to dismiss Osama bin Laden's jihadi credentials as fraudulent, ruled that attempts to resist an American attack are a "binding Islamic duty", and he asked Arab leaders to block any aggression against Iraq.

Maligned previously as a pro-Western reformer, despite his support for Palestinian suicide bombers, Tantawi's new stance shows the extent of the realignment. Moderates and radicals now appear to be united and determined to oppose the American war.

...

The big questions now are: how will the new calls to arms be translated in operational terms, and will the battlefield be limited to the Iraqi theatre?

...from Osama must be laughing, in Melbourne's newspaper, The Age

25 minute song of the day
Billy the Mountain If I listen to it 17 times, at the end of it my workday will be done. I'll also be slightly insane from the surreal madness of the darn thing.

Blogs / War / Intersection
Soldier 'bloggers' report from war: There's a new breed of combat personnel at the war front: soldier "bloggers."

Internet contact a blessing, but potential risk, for troops

It's a strange time. Everywhere I go I overhear people talking about the war and not a lot else. The SSQ talk last night on QA risk management also couldn't help it - speaking about GPS equipment software failures and jamming and how it relates to risk.

Whatever your stance on the Invasion and Operations in Iraq, I know that those of us who are US Citizens hope that our military people come home in one piece, and that the people of Iraq don't suffer overmuch.

The intersection of the current conflict and internet (journalism, blogging, news alerts, news aggregators, email, etc) is an interesting one - and *this* topic (as opposed to more general talk positive/negative on the war) seems ripe for discussion.

One thing in particular caught my eye:

"The Army even gives soldiers accounts to set up password-protected sites."

(from the pilotonline link above).

The level of communication is really stunning when you think about it.

Kynn, Muckracker / War Stuff
Gosh, that Kynn is busy. He's fact-checking the North County Times (NCTimes.com) / KOGO / Pro-troops misinformation (Kynn paints it as malpheasance, I'd say it sounds more like lazy reporters who should know better). Also check his Local War News Roundup.

Other Obligatory War Links

• Cheney is still paid by Pentagon contractor
• Risks of Iraqi war emerging
• How To Take Back America
• Ari, yesterday the U.S. decided to grant one of Haliburton's subsidiaries the contract to put out the oil well fires. And I'm wondering, given that you've known that for months and months in advance that there could be the possibility of oil well fires, why was there not a bid put out to bid on contracts, and was this given without any bidding?
• Grange: Iraqis fight with 'economy of force'
• Who Lied To Whom: Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq's nuclear program?
• Rumsfeld strategy may hit US opinion
• "Too many videogames, I think"

That's enough of that.

Some Lefty Bloggers (Some I've heard of, Some Not)- No idea if worthwhile...

• http://atrios.blogspot.com
• http://www.thismodernworld.com/
• http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
• http://www.talkleft.com/
• http://calpundit.blogspot.com/
• http://www.liberaloasis.com/
• http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TotW/Daily_Journal.html
• http://dailykos.com/
• http://www.nathannewman.org/log/
• http://tedbarlow.blogspot.com/
• http://www.sideshow.idps.co.uk/
• http://slacktivist.blogspot.com/
• http://www.prospect.org/weblog/
• http://bodyandsoul.blogspot.com/
• http://offthekuff.com/mt/
• http://www.matthewyglesias.com/
• http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/
• http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
• http://thelookingglass.blogspot.com/
• http://counterspin.blogspot.com/
• http://skyedreams.blogspot.com/
• http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
• http://johnquiggin.blogspot.com/
• http://maxspeak.org/gm/index.htm
• http://hnn.us/articles/900.html
• http://www.thetalkingdog.com/
• http://junius.blogspot.com/
• http://www.jeffcoop.com/blog/
• http://www.felbers.net/blogger.html
• http://sheldman.blogspot.com/

for Doc Searls, who posted the text but didn't linkify them...

Quote of the Day

Hope is not a plan!

...via Sustainable Fort Bragg, via Talking Points Memo

Just More Misc, Nothing Personal Today

• "In the Arab world today, we get a more informed perspective than you do"
• Yellow Times Suspended Again
• Tim O'Reilly and Mitch Kapor at PC Forum 2003
• Al Jazeera in English Launches
• Kynn with background on Al Jazeera Online
• New York Times Online Readers React to Michael Moore @ Oscars
• PHP function I'd never heard of: fgetcsv()
• The Philosopher of Islamic Terror
• Fascinating Sound invention
• phpDocumentor (via Sassy)
• The European Central Bank offers an XML feed of current Euro exchange rates
• My political compass is apparently:
  Economic Left/Right: -3.25
  Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.87 -- what's yours?
• I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam
• 'W' is a hottie?
• Making Bush tell the truth: The media have to be tougher on the Bush administration's tendency to dissemble -- especially when it comes to war (from 2002)
• Son of Saddam: As Iraq's top Olympic official, Uday Hussein is accused of the torture and murder of athletes who fail to win
• Articulate Defense of Antiwar Protesters
• Todd B's NYC Protest Pictures
• Ranty! Mailman considered Harmful

blog aggregators worth looking at

• blogdex
• popdex
• popdex: "War on Iraq"
• popdex: "Anti-war"
• popdex: "Protesting the protesters"
• technorati
• technorati: last 3 hours
• technorati: top 100 recent interesting blogs
• daypop
• daypop: top 40
• daypop: top news bursts

and some inside-baseball links, about who's linking to whom

• blogrolling: top 100
• blo.gs: most watched blogs
• myelin: blogging ecosystem
• truth laid bear blogging ecosytem

posted to nettime

Link-O-Rama - some war, some tech, some misc

• Media giant's rally sponsorship raises questions
• Myths and misconceptions about Iraq
• Learn Object Oriented Programming (OOP) the simple way!
• Clinton: Trust Tony (Blair's) Judgement
• AWStats - an open source stats package
• Just the Beginning: Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?
• A Long, Winding Road to a Diplomatic Dead End
• CDC: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) (Current news on SARS)
• Perl and Java - lesson - use the right tool for the right job; also, when coding, it's not just about building it, it's about maintaining it too
• New "Official" Chistina Aguilera fansite: xtinaxposed.com
• A Fish Talks on the War
• Robin Cook's 11 1/2 minute speech resigning from thegovernment over the Iraq War
• Legislature of New Mexico voices displeasure with USA Patriot Act - interesting development
• Great Iraq Conflict Coverage Gallery from CyberJournalist.net
• ActionScript Module for BBEdit
• News analysis: France and Germany wondering if matters have gone too far (note: From 19 March)
• Against the War - For Now
• So far I've not seen this kind of "hypersecurity"
• An alternative to MacStumbler is iStumbler for OS X
• The Cyberterrorism Big Lie
• New Section 508 Checker
• The president's real goal in Iraq
• Sad: Ethics in Technology
• christinaaguilera.to/ has relaunched. finally.
• Unauthorized Entry: The Bush Doctrine: War without anyone's permission
• The guy who hacked the gameshow Press Your Luck
• David Hartwell, a senior editor at Tor (on the science fiction publishing game)
• Marvel (Comics) Movie Doomsday Theory

Radio Show, Online
So now I've been on the radio twice, once on KPBS's The Lounge, and last month, talking about current issues in web design, on These Days. Here's the RealAudio of that show, also added as a link on the ever growing Writing & Citations page.