31. juli 2003

How to save your blog Dave Pollard's great How to save the world blog has received some much-deserved traffic lately, by writing about... blogs. Oh well, we are an introspective lot. His description of how to "break out" and attract traffic to a new blog should perhaps add a new point: write about how blogs attract traffic. I'll take that tip. I particularly like his flow chart describing the blogging process (read, comment, write, feedback, you get it). I just have to take issue with one thing, though: Dave insists you should promote your blog "sparingly. selectively." I will add: shamelessly! Unless you blog to keep a personal diary and inform a few personal friends about your life (nothing wrong with that, I hasten to add) you want lots of people to read your blog. And, false modesty aside, you do think you write a good blog, or you would not bother doing it. At least it contains stuff you are interested in, and never think there are not millions out there pretty much sharing your interests. So how can people find out about your blog? You need to promote it! Start with the assumption that a lot of people will want to read your blog, if only they find it first. You are doing them all a favour by advertising it shamelessly. 11:53:07 PM    comment []

Pointdexter to resign His controversial Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) initiative got butchered in Congress. Then his plan to have an online trading market in terrorism was ridiculed and quickly shelved. Now Admiral John Pointdexter, haunted by his past connection to the Iran Contras scandal, is about to offer his resignation, according to an unnamed official. 11:09:15 PM    comment []

Vatican opposes gay unions The Vatican has just issued a document urging everybody to resist any legal recognition of gay unions, including but not limited to marriage, and against gays being allowed to adopt children. It is certainly nothing new coming from the hardline-ruled Vatican, but this document verbosely titled "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons" is maybe even more vitrolic in its bigotry than what we are used to. As usual, it contains no sane arguments for its position, just the usual vague references to moral law and sex being for procreation only. Otherwise, mere assertions. Just another reminder that the Vatican is a medieval institution, and that this odd cleric state in Italy, whose closest international ally is the Tehran theocracy, has successfully resisted learning anything from its blood-stained history. Doesn't it ring very hollow to hear a group of men who insist that clergy should not marry say that marriage is sacred? Why would anyone think a group of old men who have never had sex (maybe except with altar boys) have anything sensible to say about sex or marriage in the first place? 8:49:26 PM    comment []

Suspect claims al-Qaeda money went to Bali attack Malaysian terror suspect Wan Min, who is imprisoned in Kuala Lumpur, confirmed to a judge that he had channeled $35,500 in three installments from al-Qaeda to Mukhlas, who is beeing tried for coordinating the Bali attack. A direct link between al-Qaeda and the Indonesian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah has until now not been confirmed. 10:05:56 AM    comment []

Abuse victims claim Vatican had official policy for cover-up A group of alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse has given US authorities a 1962 Vatican document that they say implicates the Church leadership itself in a conspiracy to cover up accusations of abuse. The document, entitled "On the Manner of Proceeding in Cases of Solicitation," was obtained by Houston-based attorney Daniel Shea, who represents sex abuse victims in the Worcester Diocese. The instructional document instructs anyone involved in "denouncing" a priest for abuse to take an oath of secrecy. It indicates that all testimony on those matters is confidential, anyone who breaks the "secret of the Holy Office," risks excommunication. If this is true, the Church instituted at its highest level a policy of protecting the priests against accusations, and that the objective was to keep even proven wrongdoers as priests. 8:19:50 AM    comment []

Ozone destruction declining A new study says that the rate of destruction of ozone in the upper stratosphere is slowing down. If this is correct, it shows that the global ban on CFC has had the desired effect. "This is the beginning of a recovery of the ozone layer," said Professor Michael Newchurch of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), the scientist who led the ozone trend-analysis research team. "We had a monumental problem of global scale that we have started to solve." Still, as the process takes decades, there is a long way to go before the ozone level starts to actually rise again, as the level of chlorine in the stratosphere has not yet peaked. 4:53:37 AM    comment []

Hard reality, hard tactics The US forces are getting tough and aggressive in the fight against Saddam loyalists. And the new tactics pay off in better intelligence, more enemy casualties and a decline in the number of attacks. Thousand of suspected fighters have been detained. And Saddam's sons were killed as a direct result of these operations. Some military sources predict the fighting will soon be reduced to a small number of die-hard Baathists with nothing to loose. The tactics will no doubt draw criticism: Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." They would have been released in due course, he added later. The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered. There is also a flip side to the hard tactics, a serious attempt to show the local population that they are indeed the good guys: After the fighting is over, U.S. military officials say, it becomes important to repair the damage -- a door smashed, a wall breached, an irrigation culvert flattened by a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank. Every U.S. brigade commander in Iraq has a "Commander's Emergency Repair Fund" of $200,000 that is replenished as he spends it. Over the past six weeks of the U.S. offensive, commanders across Iraq dispensed $13 million to rebuild schools, clinics, water treatment plans and police stations, said Army Col. David MacEwen, who helps coordinate the civic works. "During Peninsula Strike, we worked very hard for every combat action to have a 'carrot' that followed," MacEwen said. "We'd do a cordon and search in one area, and then make sure the next day that LPG [cooking gas] was available, or that a pump at a water plant was working." The efforts aren't just aimed at winning hearts and minds, but also at gaining intelligence. "When you're out doing the civil affairs operations, you get a lot of people coming up and giving you good information," said Maj. David Vacchi, the operations officer for a battalion operating just northeast of Baghdad. US forces are now on the offensive in Iraq, and at least according to these sound bites, the troops are optimistic about reducing the resistance to managable levels. I hope this is where we bury the word "quagmire" once and for all. 3:52:40 AM    comment []

Cagle I make sure I get a regular rundown of newspaper cartoons from around North America (and some international) at Cagle's Pro Cartoonist Index regularly. It is an interesting way to track what issues get the attention. Now Daryl Cagle, too, has started a blog, which contains a lot of intersting and funny comments to the art of cartoons. Cagle leans left, obviously, as does most cartoonists, but there is a healthy display of different points of view on his massive site. 2:03:59 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.08.2003; 00:23:06.