When I was in Austin earlier this week, I asked the woman at the front desk of the Radisson if there were any movie theaters nearby.

“Well,” she said, conflict playing over her face, “there’s one. But it doesn’t have stadium seating.”

“Huh?” I replied, “That’s not a requirement.”

“Um, well, it just has regular seating.”

“I’m ok with that.”

Pause as she screws up the courage to blurt: “It’s not in a good part of town.”

Aha! The light goes on. I don’t know if this was a race thing, a socio-economic thing, both or neither, but clearly “stadium seating” was the name of a truck carrying some hidden cargo.

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JD Lasica talks about blogging as “random acts of journalism.” Good phrase, good thoughts.

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I got asked on a mailing list why my views on the Iraqi war are so simplistic and one-sided. Ouch! Here’s how I replied:

Like many people, I’m ambivalent about it. I am completely suspicious of the actual motives of the Bush administration and don’t trust the information it’s providing. But I don’t need Bush to tell me that Saddam is a horror that we should never have supported in the first place. That doesn’t necessarily mean that this war is the best way to get rid of him: the carnage may be too high, the final outcome may be worse for the Iraqis, the region may become embroiled in war, Hussein may destroy Israel and Boston on his way out, we may unilaterally destroy the alliances and goodwill towards us that has made the world safer, and IMO we are likely to start a 100 years war against a terrorist movement that is strengthened and emboldened by our attack. How many American cities are you prepared to lose in retaliation for this war?

Note the “may’s” and “if’s.” It could all go great and none of the bad things may happen. I believe that, which is why I’m ambivalent. Ambivalent but not undecided.

Finally, my best guess about why Bush has rummaged through every possible justification for going to war is that we really want to show the world that we are in charge: we are the only superpower and we are willing to use our power. John Perry Barlow says that everyone gets out of the way of the driver who’s unpredictably weaving down the road, and the Iraq war is intended to show that we are willing to intervene unpredictably. But bringing peace through power works only so long as the bad guys can’t get their hands on any boxcutters. Our only hope for long-term safety, IMO, is to live in the world generously, building bridges and trust by showing the generous and loving side of the American character. So, even if all goes perfectly with the war, it will (I’m afraid) establish a policy that I think makes us and our children far less safe.

Notice that I haven’t mentioned WMD. I personally don’t believe that the war has even the slightest thing to do with that.

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If you want your heart to break, view the photos (as a QuickTime slideshow) that Kristen Ashburn took in Zimbabwe.

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About 475 comments so far at slashdot on my Salon article about David Reed’s ideas about Open Spectrum.

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Michael Pusateri, whom I met at sxsw and who helped connect me to an smtp server (thanks, Mike), points us to a vidblog at unrelatednews. The vidblogger writes:

All in all it was fun to try it out. With the shooting/capture/edits/compression taking just over 15 minutes per clip to get done, it was not bad. If you are just doing one or two it’ll be fine. But it still took too long for it to be a realistic thing to do everyday. Until there’s an easier way to streamline the process I’ll keep this idea as a fun little thing I’ll do every now and then.

(I couldn’t get the audio to work. Damn Intermenet!)

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Cory Doctorow is talking about the Hollywood Agenda. (His desktop wallpaper is Dr. Bonner’s label, a psychotic babble of philosophy, scripture and self-improvement aphorisms.) Cory says: The role of technology is to create opportunities for the entertainment industry. The entetainment industry’s role is to seek legislation that will close down those opportunities. From piano rolls to TV to Napster, that’s been the story.

Factoid: “If you were to tape digital movies and use Fedex to ship them to your friends, it would be about 100x less expensive than shipping them to your friend over the Net.” Even at the fastest connection speeds, it’d take several days to move a movie. So, Hollywood’s belief that it’s a threat is overblown.

The most important theme in Cory’s talk: Hollywood does not want us to have general purpose computing devices. The “broadcast flag” bit the FCC is considering would only work if all digital tech supports it and if device that don’t — like the computer you’re reading this on — are outlawed because they don’t support it.

Because I was session hopping, I missed the second half. The first half was Totally Cory: brilliant, funny, entertaining, right.

Really interesting panel on the future of blogging that I joined late. Paul Bausch (Blogger), Anil Dash (dashes.com), Justin Hall (links.net), Ben Trott (Movable Type), Mena Trott, moderator (Movable Type). I’m sitting on the floor and can’t see who is talking. But here are the topics being discussed:

Personal aggregators that help us read thousands of weblogs.

The price we pay by aggregating: the loss of context.

“The focus on [Clay Shirky’s] Power Law stuff drives me nuts. I have sites I don’t want to be popular.”

Good session.

[I’m back from SXSW now.]

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Salon today is running “The Myth of Interference,” an article I wrote about David Reed’s idea that the federal policies intended to prevent radio signals from interfering are based on bad science.

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If I were George Bush, I’d have Tom Ridge immediately block all broadcasts of Tony Blair’s question time in the House of Commons. The implicit comparison is just too painful.

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Paul Boutin has run his questions about World of Ends and Doc’s answers. Very helpful on both ends, so to speak.

Betsy Devine has also weighed in with some support and some thoughts of her own.

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