This morning my roommate (still in hospital)’s cat will be going to the vet indefinitely. I’m rapidly running out of roommates!

But I did get to wrangle the famous, cantankerous Frida. This is Frida in 1997.

I have added a message board to the San Diego Spots page I, Erin, and Jenny maintain. San Diegans past and present should check it out!

Dental appointment today. Very busy. New projects like crazy. A wiki. A journal for Stew. Nutty busy. Remind me to tell you all about them. Whee!

Onward

Good momentum on SanDiegoBlog. With luck there will be regular input from people. I’m pleased with the results so far.

Latest project: SanDiegoBlog.

Beta. New. For San Diegans by San Diegans. Evolving daily.

Smorgasborg has been updated with comments and a sound file from Andreas Brantmo. Thanks Andreas!

Who else gets cool Swedish web developers sending them pronunciaton .wav files?

I’m blessed.

Steve E. (who pointed me at Daniel Pipes in the first place) replies to other feedback on Daniel Pipes:

Joe, your approach reminds me of someone I once knew in grade school. While she was drawing a picture on a piece of paper, she would stop and press her finger firmly on the center of her paper and then spin the paper around the axis of her finger. When I asked her why she did that, she simply said she needed to see the picture from every angle. 🙂

A good place to start is the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, http://camera.org/

“Founded in 1982, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America is a media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA fosters rigorous reporting, while educating news consumers about Middle East issues and the role of the media. Because public opinion ultimately shapes public policy, distorted news coverage that misleads the public can be detrimental to sound policymaking. A non-partisan organization, CAMERA takes no position with regard to American or Israeli political issues or with regard to ultimate solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

Then ask themselves a few questions:

“Whatever the root causes of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, there are certain tragic cultural facts and differences that stand in the way of peace negotiations between the people of Israel and the Palestinians. No Israeli child has ever strapped a bomb to his back and gone off to kill civilian Palestinians, and yet the Palestinian leadership does too little to dispel the notion among its more extreme citizens that killing Israelis with a suicide bomb is the surest route to heaven. How can Israel deal with a population of parents that stand aside or even encourage their children to become martyrs?”

“How can Yassir Arafat, whom Forbes Magazine says is worth more than three hundred million dollars, claim to be a leader who understands and represents an impoverished people when he has become rich at their expense?”

“Is it too much to ask that the Palestinian leadership not sponsor terrorists? Is it unreasonable to insist that they stop killing innocent Israeli children before Israel jeopardizes her security and make concessions for peace?”

“Why do Palestinian schools have pictures of suicide bombers hanging up in the hallways of their schools or celebrate them as martyrs? Why do they name sports teams in the West Bank after suicide bombers? How can Israel make peace with the Palestinian people when their leaders instill a culture of terror against the Israeli people?”

“How can the Palestinian people end their impoverishment if their leaders continue to steal precious resources from them, which are then used to support terror?”

“Why has Yassir Arafat been in power for so long, and yet made so little progress towards a peaceful resolution? If he were truly committed to peace, would he not have made a sincere effort to achieve it by now?”

“When will the Palestinian people themselves have a voice at the peace table?”

Very good points. Thanks Steve!

And yes, I do like to draw on all points of view. I’ve been lucky to have great points of view to draw from.

• What I Hate About Your Programming Language
• The Will Edwards Band is opening up for the San Diego Symphony’s Summer Pops on July 5, 2003
• My quick summary of Matrix 2 was that it was only half a movie. Far too many plot threads were left dangling. I’m thinking of The Matrix Trilogy as not a trilogy. It’s two movies. One short. One long. So we wait until November for the second half of movie 2. I felt pretty educated spotting Cornel West in the council meeting
• Mailman considered beneficial rebuttal to jwz
• A few weeks ago I went to Bandar with some colleagues. Awesome Persian food in downtown San Diego
• What is OPML? Outline Processor Markup Language
• New blog on social software: Many to Many
• I have always thought Norm Ornstein was cool.
• Bush Administration vs. Its Economists
• Environmentalists = Terrorists
• Letter from the French Ambassador
• Some great CSS @ Zen Garden
• ElekTex is a digital fabric. Awesome technology that will enable some really cool coats someday.
• “inside baseball” is an idiom I can’t seem to find a direct explanation for. Though it’s plentiful on the web, that’s because it’s such an obvious title for stories about Major League Baseball. I don’t have a good definition, but it seems closely related to “inside the beltway,” referring to the propensity of Washington insiders to talk about issues which only are of interest to those who live inside the confines of the Washington D.C. beltway, the highway that rings D.C.
• This is great: Testiomony from 1982 predicting that the VCR would kill the movie business. The best quote is from Jack Valenti, saying I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
• There’s a new free weekly for San Diego, Fahrenheit / sdfahrenheit.com – it’s okay
• Another free magazine, which I picked up a few weeks ago, is Arthur – the issue I got has a great interview with Alan Moore

I had a great weekend.

I got to hear David Brin speak at an author’s event Leah took me to. He was smart and relatively articulate. I think he was speaking off-the-cuff. Some great ideas, but a bit unfocused. I suspect when polished it would be a great talk.

I went to a Writer’s Monthly.us event, also very nice.

I played racquetball on Saturday, and did well. I’m stuck weight-loss wise — backslidin’ a bit dietarily. I’m reclaiming the eye-of-the-tiger as of day-before-yesterday.

Leah and I continue to have a great time together. Tonight we’re going to go see the sequel to the Matrix. Everyone seems to be saying it’s disappointing, but it’s de rigueur to see it. So that’s the plan.

Today I attempted to shop for sunglasses downtown while taking a long walk. I like to make excuses to take long walks downtown. Sometime’s it’s a haircut. Sometimes it’s to take a photo or two. Anything to keep moving, you know?

My roommate has had nothing but drama. She will have back surgery tomorrow. I’m hopeful that it will be a good and useful and health-promoting thing! Wish Erin well!

And that’s the news. In brief.

The Daniel Pipes link Steve recommended, Kynn decried it, MAS dug it. They both have fun web identities, and they’re both as opinionated as humans come.