Britt Blaser has a terrific post that begins by quoting Tim Bray‘s right-on suggestions: Do our best to ignore the terrorist attacks (because the terrorists want our attention) and try to figure out the “Why” of it.

Unfortunately, our leader — confusing understanding with justifying — thinks asking “Why?” is akin to treason, and our news media is capable of spinning JFK Jr.’s aircraft accident into 48 hours of “No news on the missing plane” coverage. So I’m not very hopeful about these ideas that are so common-sensical that they’re practically Canadian. [Technorati tags: HomelandSecurity TimBray BrittBlaser media]

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Joi has a terrific post on why he, as a venture capitalist, is glad Europe rejected the software patent directive. Snippet:

I personally believe that software patents are primarily the tool of large companies with portfolios of patents which they cross-license with each other. Generally, it serves to keep competition out of the market and allows those with patents to push those without patents around or cut them out of markets entirely.

[Technorati tags: patents JoiIto]

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(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. [Source, thanks to Salon] [Technorati tag: KarlRove]

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The Onion is running a piece headlined “Bush regales dinner guests with impromptu oratory on Virgil’s minor works.” I know I read essentially the same article at least a couple of years ago, but I can’t google it up. Am I going nuts? (Further evidence that I’m having a nervous breakdown: I had a waking dream that the person who outed Plame turned out to be Karl Rove. Haha. Can you imagine?!) [Technorati tags: TheOnion humor]

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If Newsweek’s report is right, Karl Rove is about to be frog-marched — um, liberty-marched — out of the White House. In fact, possibly he will not pass Go and will go straight to jail. This is from Salon:

Rove never said publicly that he had nothing to do with leaking Valerie Plame’s identity to the press, but he sure managed to give people that impression. When CNN asked him about the Plame case last summer, Rove said: “I didn’t know her name. I didn’t leak her name.”

Maybe that was technically correct, but it’s now clear that it was something less than the whole truth. As Newsweek is reporting, Karl Rove may not have referred to Plame by name when he spoke with Time’s Matthew Cooper on July 11, 2003. But the email messages Time has turned over to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald show that, in a phone call with Cooper that day, Rove tried to discredit Joseph Wilson’s conclusion that Iraq hadn’t tried to buy uranium from Niger by claiming that Wilson had been assigned to look into the Iraq-Niger connection not by the vice president or by the director of the CIA but by Wilson’s wife. And Wilson’s wife, Rove told Cooper, was a CIA analyst working on WMD issues.

Tim Grieve at Salon thinks this “no-name defense” may protect Rove from perjury charges. But it’s still a crime to rat out a covert CIA agent. Well, what’s one traitorous act when you’re playing hardball, eh Karl? [Technorati tags: KarlRove plame politics]

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The Chronicle of Higher Education runs a piece by Ivan Tribble called Bloggers Need Not Apply about how educators are using applicants’ blogs to disqualify them from positions.

My take-away from this nasty bit of work: Either colleges have no tolerance for professionals having non-professional lives or blogs are revealing important information relevant to the job for which the colleges should be grateful.

Either way, I would have thought that an institution of higher learning would be delighted to have its faculty and staff out in the world wide conversation. I guess I was wrong.

By the way, Ivan the Tribble is too gutless even to sign his own name. C’mon out and play, “Ivan.” There’s nothing to be afraid of…just a bunch of bloggers having a good time. [Technorati tags: blogs education]

[Thanks to Jo Ann Oravec for the link.]

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Paul English writes:

I was complaining to my brother yesterday that a stereo shop put six miles on my convertible even though there was no need to drive it. He said “that’s nothing!” and told me a body shop kept his Acura for one month, supposedly waiting and waiting for various parts, but when he finally got the car back, he looked in the GPS and saw addresses for several towns all over the place! I guess they had a fun time using his ride for the month. Sheesh! He then tells me his friend drives a tow truck and admitted to taking a couple quarters out of each car his tows— just enough to add up for coffee runs during the day but not enough to elicit complaints. My brother couldn’t believe this, so he has started leaving a dozen quarters in his car each time he leaves it at a shop or with a valet, and sure enough, people almost always take some of the money! Time for a major sting operation me thinks…

Ack. Makes me appreciate Billy and Freddy who own the A-Z repair shop we’ve been going to for 20 years. Their father brought ’em up right.

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Excellent interview with Negativland on copyright. (Thanks to Larry for the link.)

Chris Nolan reminds us that BlogHer isn’t just for women. Men are welcome, too. What a great chance for men to attend what looks like a really interesting conference while simultaneously seeing what it feels like. I wish I could go but it’s smack dab in the middle of my family’s two-week vacation.

David W. Stephenson on smart mobs for homeland security. [Technorati tags: blogher security copyright DavidWStephenson]

A bit of self-centeredness, if you don’t mind? E-School News has a nice write-up of my NECC keynote (video here), starting at the bottom of this page.

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In an email to a mailing list, Wikipedian SJ Klein suggests comparing the coverage of the London bombings at Wikipedia and Wikinews. And he provides some stats:

The cluster of news article(s) had around 300 edits yesterday, trailing off to 30 today before noon, and effectively none since then; it remains the lead story on the main page.

The Wikipedia article has had 500 edits today, compared to around 3000 yesterday, and is still getting 10-20 an hour. It remains the second of three active current events bullets on the main page.

[Technorati tags: wikipedia wikinews media]

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Terry Heaton, who writes smart stuff about the intersection of post-modernism and the modern media, also is a funny guy. Here’s his list of signs that you’re reading spam. [Technorati tag: TerryHeaton]

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