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The fog of "war"
That's the title of my essay over in Salon proper, posted tonight (it's a Premium piece). It looks at how difficult it is to assess the U.S. progress in the "war on terrorism" in the absence of a clear definition of the war itself -- who the enemy is/enemies are and what U.S. goals are. It also suggests that Bush has deliberately chosen to be vague, because it lets him retrofit "War on Terrorism" energies onto his pre-existing agenda -- most obviously, the campaign against Iraq.
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Ecco redivivus?
Longtime readers of my column know that I've lamented more than once about the disappearance of Ecco, my favorite "PIM" (Personal Information Manager), a cool outliner/datebook/contacts manager that fell by the wayside as Outlook became the monopoly standard. Small communities of Ecco devotees have survived, and the program still works fine, but keeping the faith with a program that hasn't been developed for five years is not easy.
My heart raced as I read the subject line on a reader e-mail that "Ecco Pro is back! " It's not quite like that. The good news is that NetManage, the company that purchased Ecco from its original developers and then orphaned it, has made the program available for free (it's still copyright, still under license, but apparently anyone can go download it). There's info here. But there doesn't seem to be much more going on than that. Still, it's a perfectly functional Win32 application. Go check it out if you're looking for a good PIM.
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Hope in the universe
For decades American politics has been trapped in a cycle that benefits no one except the media companies that own TV stations: Politicians felt they had to advertise on TV to get elected (generally they were right). Politicians had to raise enormous sums of money to pay for those TV ads. The money went from contributor's pockets directly into media coffers, with only a brief stop-off in campaign warchests. Politicians ended up beholden to contributors and devoting much of their energy to fundraising; the electorate got fed worthless "attack ads" and 30-second soundbites; only the TV station owners profited.
Today's New York Times reports that, glory be, the era of TV political advertising may be beginning to fade:
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The once-overwhelming influence of television advertising on political campaigns is declining, Democratic and Republican leaders say, leading them to embrace aggressively old- fashioned campaign tools like telephone calls and door-knocking in this year's Congressional elections. While candidates continue to devote most of their resources to television, they say the power of commercials to affect an election's outcome is being diluted by the glut of cable television stations, the popularity of such commercial-free premium networks as HBO and the anesthetizing frequency and similarity of political advertisements. |
If this trend story proves accurate, it could be the best news in a long, long time.
Postscript: In comments a couple of people are saying, "Hey, phone calls, knocks on my door? That doesn't sound like an improvement." I disagree. Politics, real politics, is about getting out and talking to people -- neighbors talking to neighbors, politicians actually facing the human beings they represent, supporters of candidates trying to persuade voters. This is retail politics, and I'll take it any day over the wholesale game of TV ads.
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