Scripting News

Sun, 16 Feb 2003 04:49:04 GMT

Doc's stolen laptop showed up at his son's school unleashing lots of good energy and not a little relief in Santa Barbara.

Sun, 16 Feb 2003 04:37:24 GMT

Weblogs At Harvard is the most interesting newcomer at Technorati tonight.

Sun, 16 Feb 2003 05:19:06 GMT

One more Harvard Law weblog for the directory.

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 23:48:23 GMT

I'm fed up with American Airlines. I booked this trip in mid-January, and one of the criteria for the return flight was availability of a window seat. I just checked the reservation (I fly tomorrow), and it said I had no assigned seat. I called the airline and the best they could offer was that seat assignments are not guaranteed, and I might be able to get a window seat at the gate. So I checked with JetBlue. They have a window seat. $300 one-way. What the heck. I've heard good things about them. I hope they're good. I'll let you know.

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 22:09:31 GMT

Fascinating screen shot from Jon Udell.

News by a Nerd. It Just Doesn't Matter.

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 18:03:27 GMT

NY Times editorial calling for military intervention in Iraq.

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 19:56:57 GMT

A common response from across the ocean. Unlike the US, France and Germany know what war is like. There's the disconnect. Click here. Clue: That's not Germany or France.

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 17:45:55 GMT

John Robb asks a pointed question about France and their deals with Hussein's Iraq.

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 17:55:44 GMT

Paolo Valdemarin, who I consider a friend, responds to my War for Oil piece below. He strongly disagrees, but then says "Saddam Hussein has to step down." That's constructive. If Russia, France and China could get behind that simple idea, we might be able to avert war.

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 17:40:33 GMT

Joi Ito marches for peace in Japan. "I think it is definitely more fun to be against the war than for it," he says.

War for oil?

Sat, 15 Feb 2003 15:58:48 GMT

There was an excellent op-ed piece in the NY Times a few days ago, by Max Boot, that disassembles the theory that the US wants to go to war with Iraq to somehow control the oil.

First, he pointed out that Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who is opposed to going to war, says that he knows his country and government, and knows it's not true. Then Boot explains how we already control the oil, with our dollars. Hussein would sell us as much as we want. He doesn't have an exclusive on oil, and as long as that's true he has no control (that's probably why he took over Kuwait and was starting to move on Saudi Arabia, and went to war with Iran -- to get control of all the Middle East oil reserves).

And we all know what he does with the oil money -- he uses it to build nukes, missiles to deliver them, etc etc. He is one major asshole, a dangerous one. Why anyone would stand up for him is beyond me. Yet that's what the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese (and others) are doing. This makes no sense. (Unless you consider the possibility that they have conflicts of interest.)

Then in the last few pargraphs the author explained that the Germans and French and other European countries with long histories of starting brutal hypocritical wars over things like oil, sometimes even proclaiming themselves the master race, might not understand a country like the US where we're more likely to go to war to save the free world. Stupid ole US, no good deed goes unpunished. Of course. We knew that.