After flying all night, I arrived at the York Hotel at 10:30 this morning. The hotel is beautiful: a thoroughly modern, elegant room in an old structure gained by climbing foliage-covered steps. I slept for a couple of hours and then went out to see a bit of the city before the taxi my hosts have arranged — thank you very much! — was scheduled to pick me up. I spent 1.25 hours stumbling onto banks, trying to find one that changes US dollars, and finally did. Then I steeled myself to try to find a cheese sandwich in a town that’s apparently been certified 100% Atkins compliant. Mission accomplished. You know changing money and finding cheese aren’t such bad ways of seeing a city.

I spent the next four hours visiting highlights on the tourist menu. This took me across the expanse of the city, but of course in four hours, I’m willing to admit that I haven’t exhausted the riches of Lisbon. Nevertheless, I cling to the foolish belief that in a few hours of walking around, you can learn a lot about a city. You can, so to speak, hear some of its music, the rhythms and sounds and smells that the inhabitants take for granted. (Someday remind me to tell you why the Harmony of the Spheres is the most beautiful idea in Western history.) Of course, if you live longer in a city, you end up unlearning a lot of what you learned at first.

In terms of defined locales, I saw the Castelo de Sao Jorge, the outside of the Torre de Belem aand the Monisteiro dos Jeronimos, and the inside of the Museum of Archaeology. (I only saw the outsides because the insides were closed when I got there.) And I walked a lot. I learned that the bends in the streets are older than the streets.

I’m liking it here a lot. But now I have to run to dinner with my hosts. More later.

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According to the Associated Press, a man in Unity, NH, is suing a police officer for allegedly molesting him ten years ago. The officer’s name? Sergeant Barrit Bodkins. Bare Bodkins’ parents must have been both literate and cruel.

And to make matters worse, a “bodkin” is defined as a prick.

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I’m off in a couple of hours for Portugal. I arrive Tuesday morning after taking a red-eye, have dinner with the conference hosts that night, talk on Wednesday morning, and leave Thursday morning. That leaves me about three hours to see the entire country, plumb its depths, and come to grips with the Portuguese soul. That would be impossible for most people. Thankfully, I am a shallow American.

BTW, here’s a travel tip: I’ve spent the past couple of weeks convincing my children that Portugal’s leading export is hotel soap. That’s going to save me loads of shopping time!

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This comes from the blog of Iran’s vice president:

The convulsions in Iraq are of benefits for America

I believe that America, close to the presidential elections, needs Iraq situation to be convulsed more than ever. It is because the best reason for America’s stability is these convulsions. Bush needs to announce the public in America that there is an unfinished project in Iraq that no one else other than him can make it to the last point and if doesn’t finish, the Middle East will be in war and fire and America will be injured and damaged more than any other country.

If my analysis be the right one, Moghtadi Sadr attitudes and actions in Convulsion making in Iraq and unifying Shiite and Sunnis together against America, is just exactly what America needs in such a situation.

The out of tradition attitude by America which is being shown against the convulsions in Iraq, like the blockade of Falluja or killing the innocent Iraqi citizens who are extremely tired of killings and wars, or closing some newspapers in Iraq by America, which are all opposite of the principles that America used to talk about. These are all in concern with how much do the Americans need a convincing reason for their stability in these days close to their elections and also how much would these manners be effective for Bush’s stabilization.

I hope that those who are influential in political areas of Iraq, including Shiite and Sunni parties, pay attention to this reality and do not prepare grounds for the longer stability of occupational regime and let Iraqis to be able to decide on their destiny as soon as possible.

First, need I point out how remarkable it is that a vice president is blogging so frankly and so personally?

I can certainly see why the upheaval in Iraq from outside the US looks like it should be helpful to the incumbent president. And we do hear the Republicans talking about not changing horses in midstream (or, as someone put it recently, not changing horses in mid-Apocalypse:). But surely the Republicans would be happier if Iraq were stable, democratic and quiet, for they get the bulk of the blame for the war not going well.

Another attack on the US homeland, however, would (IMO) greatly favor the Republicans because they are more capable of the sort of intemperate response that we would emotionally want. It’d be the sort of classic id vs. superego battle that the superego always loses.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. And, in my book, hope is something you work for.

By the way, don’t miss VP Abtahi’s description of the social role of coffee.

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I’m at the second BloggerCon, Dave Winer’s do at Harvard.

Dave begins by sketching the shape of the conference. Then he leads us in a sing-along of Take Me Out to the Ballgame and the US national anthem. Really.

Now it’s on to Jay Rosen’s session on blogging and journalism. He’s running it like a 100-person seminar, which is the format of sessions here. Why is blogging moving towards journalism, Jay begins by asking. There is, of course, a spread of opinion. Are blogs moving towards journalism? Are they more like op-eds? Are they muckrakers? Could blogs move towards journalism if they didn’t have real journalists to rely on? Is there a sharp distinction in that journalists have a set of practices and ethics they follow? How does blogging change journalists? Does it alter their attempt to be objective? Does blogging hurt the relationship with sources?

I did a session on blogs in business. “Did a session” means that I facilitated a group discussion. There are no panels here, which is turning out to be a great choice. The moderators actively facilitated, in the mode of Jeff Jarvis’ stellar session last year, keeping the discussions moving and focused. I highly recommend this format to other conference organizers: The audience is the panel.

I’ve spent most of the day taking notes for the IRC, so I don’t have notes for you. Here are some links, though, many from the last session I was able to attend, the one on blogging and religion:

Velveteen Rabbi

NeoPaganism

Iranian VP’s blog

GhanaWeb

Hoder’s comments

Hoder on making a blogosphere

Islamicate

Religion for the non-religious

The Revealer on Bush’s religious language

The Daily Ablution

Catholic RageMonkey

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Hoder on the BloggerCon IRC points to a blog by the VP of Iran. Quick look: Wow!

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I’m at BloggerCon. I’m blogging this out of order, but at the moment I’m at Rebecca MacKinnon’s session on international blogging. She points us to her aggregation of international blogs. Looks useful.

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I’ve just published a new issue of my newsletter, JOHO. It consists of a single article that tries to apply the ordinary language sense of ID to the Net:

The term “identity” was confusing enough in the real world. Its meaning in the digital world is even more ambiguous. Since momentous decisions about the nature of online life hang on this verbal ambiguity, we need to be extra-special careful about the real-world assumptions that are guiding our expectations about digital identity.

So, here’s my program. Let’s start with the real world meaning of identity. Then let’s see if we can use that to clarify identity’s digital meaning.

Now, here are my hidden aims:…

More…

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Yesterday I was at an all-day meeting of group looking into privacy issues around medical records. The number of people in a typical database of medical records who have the same social security number is astoundingly high. And, apparently there are 12 William Smiths born every day in the US.

So, it’s occurred to me that we could solve lots of our problems if we required people to give unique names to their children. For example, “William Smith1087b” or perhaps “Jeff ButterBurp12 Michaels” and “Rashid SneekerBang Jones.”

ICANN could set up name servers and authorize … Oh, to hell with it.

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Tony Blair on why we’re in Iraq…and Terry Jones’ grading of his essay.

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