Morning green tea notes

Sunday, September 9, 2007 by Dave Winer.

It's been a really interesting morning, in a sick kind of way (that is, I'm still really sick, coughing and wheezing, rasping and sneezing).  

First, I got a really excellent How To Be A Sick Dude from Naked Jen, my very good friend from Santa Cruz, who specializes in wellness through herbs and good vibes. She's been sending well-intentioned "mom energy" my way, advising me to do certain things, and against others. The most serious thing she warned me about was doing too much too soon. That's a good way to be sick for a month, she warned. So I asked for her prescription. When can I go for a walk, and how long should it be? I really want to get out and I think pulling oxygen in and out of my lungs would be good for them. But when I exert myself, even a little, I start coughing madly. So she wrote me a How To, and I'm going to encourage her to post it on her blog because a lot of other people could benefit from this common sense advice on what to do and what to avoid. 

Marc Canter wrote a fantastic blog post this morning that explains in a nutshell all that's wrong with the tech press. It's a well-written piece, you get the sense that he's spent a lot of time thinking about it. The problem is that when the press don't do their job, and those of us who care about getting the real story do their job for them, it's very easy to get rid of the problem, just make fun of the people who care enough to ask. That's what happened at Gnomedex, I asked questions of someone in power that he didn't want to answer.  

The sad thing is that this doesn't just happen in the tech press, it happens in all media. They feel it's their responsibility to carry the story the way those in power want it carried, so they ask questions about "the surge" that Bush wants asked and only when he wants them asked. We're seeing this play out in excruciatingly agonizing detail with tomorrow's appearance in Congress of General Petraeus. He will come to explain the decision that's already been made, he'll say we can discuss it when it's been given a chance to work or not. How about next June or July?  

I've been playing around with a new expandable display for the Scripting News home page, using the mktools package from Matt Kruse. Let me know if you like it, or don't.