David Weinberger of the Boston Globe is covering the DigitalID World conference in Denver, Colorado, and reporting on the event in his blog. Sounds like fairly dull stuff concerning digital identity technology, but the way Dave is covering the event bespeaks the new journalism. "Why," he asks himself, "should I blog about it?"

I exist, therefore I blog.

Stumper Gets Out of Hand

They play rough politics in Pakistan, which you'd imagine just by seeing how passionate they are about alliteration in their acronyms. Khurshid Khan, running for the nomination of the Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians, or PPPP, went up to the podium and told reporters that he was about to "give them a surprise." Then he took a pistol out of his pocket.

A moment later he pointed the gun at his left hand and pulled the trigger, spraying blood over the podium.

Why They Hate Us

No, not the Muslims—the French. The Herald-Tribune reports on a couple of academic works that have been dominating the best-seller lists in the land of Burgundy and Brie.

Philippe Roger's book, L'Ennemi americain, has drawn positive comment from Le Monde, and Le Nouvel Observateur calls it "a 'masterly' analysis of a French tradition that reflects a combination of stupidity, ignorance, and paranoia." Briefly, Roger thinks that the reflexive Gallic hatred of all things American "is a willful delusion, an attempt by a dominant political and intellectual caste to mask its own failures and insignificance." Making us the whipping boy keeps the French busy and optimistic, and it's a bonding activity, too.

"It is impossible to understand French anti-Americanism or its timelessness if you don't see the social-national benefits it represents in manufacturing a tissue of consensus."

Euroclown: "Monsieur, you Americaines, you are always—

American: Put a goddamn sock in it, Jacques.

Now It's Her Turn

The trial of the Carr brothers continues in Wichita, going into day two. The brave survivor known to the press only as H.G. took the stand and began her testimony following the prosecution's display of the crime scene photographs. Despite the Carr's attorneys' repeated objections, the judge overruled and allowed the jury to examine the killers' handiwork. Then H.G. identified her assailants and began describing what they did to her and her friends. She described being forced to drive one of the brothers to an ATM machine in between her rapes:

When it was her turn to drive, she said the man kept fiddling with the radio, trying to find a music station he liked.

"Oh, Christ," someone from the gallery sighed in disbelief.

4:25:01 PM       

For a while now, the NYPD has been looking into a series of 50 threatening letters that were sent to Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Marylin Diamond. Today they decided to shut down the case after a criminal profiler concluded that the judge probably wrote them herself.

On the bright side, city resources can be better deployed now that elite detectives from NYPD's Intelligence Division no longer have to provide protection round-the-clock at Diamond's home. On the downside, a severely disturbed woman is still sitting on the bench. And the people she named in a list of "probable suspects" who might have written the poison pen missives are completely outraged. Here's Tom Snowdon, who was questioned twice by detectives in 1999:

"Unless she is charged, it seems the cops are saying, 'Yeah, she's a nut, but what can we do? There should be a way they can prove she wrote those letters, and she should be arrested, but she is so politically connected, it will never happen."

We'll Be the Judge

In Lake City, Florida, a judge with good sense refused to allow Charles Haffey to legally change his name to "God." Haffey wanted the catchy moniker "as a way to gain release from feelings of anxiety and rage that have plagued him since he served in Vietnam." Yeah, people calling you "God" would sort of do that, sure. But you'd also have a lotta folks invoking your name in vain, too. Anyway, the judge let Haffey go with his second choice:

He drew on a passage where Moses asks God who he is and hears: "I am who I am or I will be who I will be."

"That's kind of wordy, so I'm just going for 'I Am Who I Am' as my full legal name," he said. "My first name, of course, would be 'I Am.'"

Judge, Jury, and Executioner

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times went to Tikrit, Iraq, in search of some background information on Saddam Hussein. You know, a little local color, some tales of his lighthearted and wayward youth, that sort of thing. Turns out that Iraq's strongman is also the country's "best-selling novelist," which comes as no surprise, and he "enjoys strumming the lute and is passionate about Hemingway." A real Renaissance man, sounds like.

And if any book critic were rash enough to pan his novels, he would have the offender's tongue cut out and his entire family beaten to death. Afterward he might write a poem extolling the massacre.

9:56:17 AM