mjh’s Weblog Entry - 11/24/2002: "hello, world!

After Greymatter, I switched to MoveableType and, then, settled with WordPress.

I think I posted my first web pages in 1993, although I don’t believe I have a copy of those. The wonderful Internet Archive Wayback Machine has my AOL pages starting in 1998. Good thing, too, since AOL just discontinued that service and I can’t find other backups.

My public writing goes back at least as far as the letter I wrote my high school newspaper protesting the showing of the Three Stooges at lunch time in the auditorium. I objected to their adolescent violence. The editor added this headline: Lovers of Decency Unite! That was probably 1971.

peace,
mjh

PS: Coincidentally — if you believe in coincidence – today, the 2nd quarter of my third book, Digital Photography For Seniors For Dummies, is due to Wiley and this is the first day my second book is available on Amazon: Digital Photography For Dummies. There is no doubt that blogging has helped me as a writer — and has put me in touch with readers. (Although, I am supposed to be working on my book as I write this.)

I found the main entry and the secondary entry that probably created the match when the two entries were merged in an archive that may no longer exist, except in Google’s memory. I re-read both of these entries (the second is a series of four to five entries) and I enjoyed them again. Perhaps, you will, too.

http://www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/mine/you-are-what-you-eat/
http://www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/mine/left-undone/

peace,
mjh

PS: Testing that Google link above turned up another of my pages for the first time. No, not this one, which should appear in search results eventually. Instead, this page was listed — and it’s still out there. The Web is the trash heap future archaeologists and comedians will mine.

PPS: CKO points out that 12 hours later, Google lists *this* entry in that search — that’s fast. See Behind the Scenes of a Google Query, By Brian Ussery, to see just how fast Google is (responding to a search, not indexing, which was quite fast).

You probably already know no blog can contain me. Or is it, satisfy me. As a multi-faceted person, I have multiple blogs. Compartmentalizing my thoughts doesn’t always work, however, and I become conflicted about risking redundancy in cross-posts versus going unread, a fate worse than undead.

Here’s the overview:

• www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/ - You’re soaking in it now. Part political, personal without being icky.
• www.mjhinton.com/wild/ - Ah, Wilderness!, where I write about the wild.
• www.mjhinton.com/help/ - PC Training & Consulting (since 1984), where I write about computer topics.
• www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/ - My photoblog; my joy.

All of the above have RSS feeds for the nerds. The latest headlines from each can be found at www.edgewiseblog.com. (Scroll down for links to a few of my friends.)

Lately, I’ve started blogging at DukeCityFix. I’m tempted by the potential audience. (Not so much that I would abandon my loyal readers here. Remember, I’ve eschewed a citywide audience before.) Even on theFix, I have two trains of thought:

• www.dukecityfix.com/profile/mjh/ - I’ll write here occasionally about topics I feel warrant the attention of DCF readers who can’t drag themselves across the Web to this blog.
• www.dukecityfix.com/group/openspace/ - Less mine than ours, this is a place to extol Abq’s open space.

As you see, I’m really out there. You also see, I hope, that I enjoy all of this, but understand my enjoyment is deepened by your time and attention. Let me know what you think. peace, mjh

PS: Oh, yeah, I’m even on myspace (http://www.myspace.com/techeditor), but that’s so last year.

Before Pat Robertson slips completely from our short attention spans and the 24 hour news cycle, let’s take a moment to remember not only what an ass he is but what kind of Christian he must be to call for killing and then lie about that and, in classic right-wing fashion, blame the media for misrepresenting him. Pious scoundrels like Robertson, and a long list of cohorts, will not only bring about the downfall of the Republican Party, but possibly Christianity itself and god help America in the process. mjh

This is how the Web works for me. I was reading Chris’s blog and saw his favorable comments about Seth’s blog, so I went there. Somewhere on Seth’s blog, he made a parenthetical remark about the word “blurb.” I really like the word “blurb” — it sounds funny, it serves a useful purpose, and it looks recent. I can’t quite explain how that is possible; why “farm” sounds like it has been around longer than “fark.”

So, I googled “blurb” and ended up at Weird Words, where I learned rather succinctly about blurb’s creator, Gelett Burgess, whose other neologism were not quite as successful (though voip and VOIP may be puns now), as well as about blurb’s relationship to bromide, another pet of mine. (Taking an old word and applying it in a new way isn’t a neologism — so what is it?) I think Burgess deserves credit for creating the context that led “blurb” to its meaning, but I’m not sure he really coined the word as we use it (follow the link — decide for yourself). I wonder how one searches for the original Ms. Blurb.

All of which proves that Takin’ Care Of Business is as much my theme song today as it was 30 years ago.

Thanks, Tim Berners-Lee, for the World Wide Web, our hive mind, where ADD is an asset and serendipity endlessly enriches our lives. mjh

Look at me I’m self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day

We interrupt this discussion of Karl Rove’s email to bring you an important reminder: there were no WMDs and the world is considerably more violent than it was two years ago. Now, back to what did Rove
know and when did he know it. mjh

Google Search: Karl-Rove

FOXNews.com - Politics - Can Bush Survive Without Rove?

President Bush said last year that if someone in his administration leaked the name of a CIA agent, that person would no longer be in his administration.

I’m really surprised at this common misquoting of Bush. More often, it is said that Bush said he would fire the culprit. Not so. I’ve seen the tape many times and Bush literally says such a person would be “taken care of.” How is that clearly “fired”? It could just as easily mean promoted or executed. Why do we all accept this constant interpreting of Bush as a non-native speaker (here’s what he meant, not what he said)? mjh

Rove e-mailed adviser about talk with reporter BY JOHN SOLOMON

“When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.’‘ …

He later told a grand jury the e-mail was consistent with his recollection that his intention in talking with Cooper that Friday in July 2003 wasn’t to divulge Plame’s identity but to caution Cooper against certain allegations Plame’s husband was making, according to legal professionals familiar with Rove’s testimony.

Rove sent the e-mail shortly before leaving the White House early for a family vacation that weekend, already aware that another journalist he had talked with, Chicago Sun-Times syndicated columnist Robert Novak, was planning a column about Plame and Wilson. …

The AP reported Thursday that Rove acknowledged to the grand jury that he talked about Plame with Cooper and Novak before they published their stories but that he originally learned about the operative’s identity from the news media, not government sources.

Republicans cheered the latest revelations Friday, saying they showed Rove wasn’t trying to hurt Plame but instead was trying to informally warn reporters to be cautious about some of Wilson’s claims. Democrats, however, said that even if Rove wasn’t the leaker, someone still divulged Plame’s identity.

AP

My reading of the text above is that Rove wanted to delay Cooper so Novak, a friend of the administration, would get the scoop. Or, that Rove was trying to discourage a reporter from Wilson’s claims (ie, let’s keep this quiet). mjh

Tennessee Independent Media Center: feature/6261
Karl Rove’s Defense is No Defense
by H.C. Kennedy

Novak’s initial column identified Plame as “an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.” He has since claimed that he believed Plame was merely an analyst at the CIA, not a covert operative — the difference being that analysts are not undercover, so identifying them is not a crime. Critics contend that after decades as a Washington reporter Novak was well aware of the difference and would be unlikely to make such a mistake. Indeed, a search of the Nexis database for the terms ‘CIA operative’ and ‘agency operative’ shows Novak correctly used them to describe covert CIA employees every single time they appear in his articles. Including the Plame article.

Unconfirmed Sources

After all, Mr. Rove was not trying to destabilize the United States; at least not more than he’s already done. He was only engaging in petty revenge against his political enemies. That’s not a crime, that’s just your run of the mill Republican politics. Ms. Plame’s outing was more of a governmental friendly fire thing than out and out criminality.

New research suggests that gene variants, which are known to raise the risk of asthma, decrease the risk of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a common type of brain cancer that is rapidly fatal.

We should all be very aware that we know little about subtlety and synergy in genetics. We are already dabbling in “gene therapy” and genetic modifications. What happens when we take something terrible out and that thing was actually a component of something wonderful? Worse, imagine we also take out the ability to perceive the change. Oh, it’s so wonderful that everyone is tall and beautiful and lives forever thanks to our glorious god-king! mjh

PS: Damn it, Mark, it’s hyperbole like that that makes everyone ignore the rantings of environmentalists! Can’t you just say it is cheaper to have asthma than brain cancer? That’s the kind of reasonable argument that wins public support.

Go read Jim Scarantino’s column on the decline of environmentalists in public opinion (Enviros’ sinking credibility starts at home); I’ll wait. Done? OK.

I appreciate Jim’s thoughtful concern over this supposed decline and its implications to the future well-being of the environment. And I celebrate Jim’s rarity as a Green Republican (about as welcome as a Log Cabin Republican to the True Believers).

For local color, Jim points out that former founders of the Weather Underground and Earth First! live in Albuquerque. He neglects to mention one has long been a teacher who changes the world through sweat instead of bombs. The other in involved in numerous organizations that no one sensible would call radical. Hey, Jim, don’t you know any young radicals? Well, who does.

As long as we’re looking at New Mexico as microcosm, perhaps Jim can explain how ranchers, a small and declining group, can thwart wolf reintroduction when a very large part of the public favors it. And, how is it that this group is so powerful in the Gila and powerless in the Four Corners, where they oppose the environmental degradation caused by drilling?

Nobody does hyperbole like Jim. He sounds like a mainstream conservative when he slickly moves from the “hype” over arsenic to the implication that “enviros” are just as wrong about mercury (and 10,000 other pollutants) and massive species die-off. No, he assures us, “we’re doing fine.” Worse, those incompetent enviros who cry wolf have no one but themselves to blame if the public doesn’t listen if the enviros ever get it right. (Jim would be thrown out of any truly conservative group by allowing that enviros might be right about something.)

While some damage has been done to the Environmental Movement by Earth First or the Earth Liberation Front — or even PETA — it pales in comparison to that other force that Jim doesn’t give it’s full due: the Radical Wrong. It has been 35 years since the first Earth Day, but it has been more than 40 years since Big Tobacco began denying a connection between smoking and cancer and industry sang the praises of DDT (your death is their profit). It has also been more than 20 years since Ronnie Raygun blamed smog on trees and James Watt said Christians didn’t need to worry about the environment because god gave it to them to use as they see fit. These aren’t just fringe wackos — these are pillars of their community. And their message hasn’t gotten a whit friendlier to the environment or your health and well-being. Welcome back, DDT. Hello, nuclear bunker busters!

Even today, hordes of writers, deluded or paid, crank out messages about the uncertainty of “global climate change” (instead of Human-caused Global Warming) and science in general. The destroyers ridicule “little creatures we’ve never heard of” and the tree-huggers who care. Along the way, the Radical Wrong has pissed in every well they can to convince us that everything is a matter of opinion, all of equal standing (except when it comes to the Constitution and Bible being immutable truth subject to no interpretation ever). Who profits when people are uncertain, confused and deceived? Not the environmentalists nor the environment itself, that’s clear.

Ultimately, even 50 million environmentalists can’t stop the selfish profiteers or alter that sense of entitlement — of Manifest Destiny — that is the real threat to the earth. It’s my land and I can do anything I want with it. Now git. mjh

Something isn’t quite connecting for me in the matter of Karl Rove’s involvement in the outing of a CIA agent. That’s in spite of my belief that I have paid very close attention to the matter from the earliest days.

I need to walk through a few things to come to grips with this:

There are 3 reporters involved. Robert Novak published an article that made Plame’s identity public; he wrote that TWO administration insiders had confirmed this.

Matt Cooper and Judith Miller also knew about Plame from someone in the administration. (Miller was a big fan of the WMD lie.) How do we know that Cooper and Miller knew anything — did they publish that fact or is this a leak from the special investigation / grand jury?

Cooper says his source released him to talk but, I believe, has not publicly said that source is Rove. Miller is in jail — we do not know who her source is.

Novak is not in jail, so we assume he has cooperated. Who are the TWO sources?

I believe Rove’s lawyer says that Rove learned about Plame from Novak (leaving TWO other sources for Novak) and mentioned “Mrs. Wilson” to Cooper. Some sources say this was to indicate that Wilson was lying when he said Cheney sent him to Africa. How does one disprove the other?

I want to know who Novak’s other one (or two or more) sources were — and how the source knew. Do all 3 reporters have exactly the same source(s)?

I don’t want Rove to become a martyr so that someone else gets off free. I want to know why Novak isn’t in jail and why he still has a job as a reporter. mjh

Police in Britain are searching for the mastermind of the London attacks….

The British Broadcasting Corp. said police were hunting for a fifth man connected to the attackers, but not involved in the bombings. The report was not confirmed by police.

Police? You mean the Brits aren’t going to respond to these attacks by bombing one country, invading another, setting up extraterritorial prisons, shipping suspects off to others for torture, curtailing citizens rights and insulting anyone who questions their response? Wow. What a country. mjh