Why Lieberman Will Lose Tuesday's Primary

Joe Lieberman in December:

It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril,

Joe Lieberman yesterday:

What I don't think is right, as I've said over and over again, are many of the Bush administration's decisions regarding the conduct of the war. The fact is I have openly and clearly disagreed with and criticized the president. ...

I not only respect your right to disagree or question the president or anyone else -- including me -- I value your right to disagree.

Though I eagerly supported his vice presidential candidacy in 2000, I won't miss Sen. Lieberman when he loses Tuesday's Connecticut primary and is defeated in the general election (or drops out beforehand).

Lieberman lost the primary when he said he'd run as an independent. This announcement legitimized the possibility he'd be defeated by challenger Ned Lamont, showed disloyalty to his party and indicated he's a sore loser. This gave his opponent all of the joementum, and Lieberman's been in free fall ever since.

I keep reading how angry Lieberman has been over Lamont's opposition, which demonstrates one of the reasons he's in such trouble. A three-term senator with all the advantages of incumbency, he can't get over the fact that this election wasn't just handed to him.

Politics · 2006/08/07 · 29 COMMENTS · Link

U.S. Troops Secured Baghdad Rally for Hezbollah

U.S. troops provided some of the security for the rally in Baghdad today where thousands of Iraqi Shiites demonstrated for Hezbollah:

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr summoned his followers around the country to attend a mass rally today in the city's Sadr City district in support of the Shiite militants of Hezbollah battling Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

Iraqi government television said the Defense Ministry had approved the demonstration, a sign of the public anger over Israel's offensive in Lebanon and of al-Sadr's stature as a major player in Iraqi politics.

Crowds of young men began arriving in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City late Thursday and were housed in mosques and Shiite community centers. U.S. Army vehicles guarded approaches to the slum to prevent clashes between Shiite and Sunni extremists.

Dressed in white shrouds to indicate their willingness to die for the cause, demonstrators waved Hezbollah flags and chanted "death to Israel" and "death to America":

"I consider my participation in this rally a religious duty. I am proud to join this crowd and I am ready to die for the sake of Lebanon," said Khazim al-Ibadi, 40, a government employee from Hillah.

Al-Sadr followers painted U.S. and Israeli flags on the main road leading to the rally site, and demonstrators stepped on them with relish. Alongside the painted flags was written: "These are the terrorists."

So the U.S. is simultaneously supplying bombs to Israel for use against Hezbollah; encouraging a ceasefire to stop the bombing; working with Sunni Arab states who fear a Shiite alliance across Iran, Iraq and Lebanon; propping up a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government; and protecting Iraqis eager to join Hezbollah and wipe Israel off the map.

No matter which side you've taken in the Middle East, America is on your side.

Politics · 2006/08/04 · 27 COMMENTS · Link

Minor Edits Proposed to RSS Specification

An RSS Advisory Board vote has begun on minor edits to the RSS specification:

1. Revise the specification to reflect http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification as the permanent URL of the document and RSS-Public as the mailing list where users can pose questions about the format.
2. Give this version of the specification document the revision number "RSS 2.0.8".

Rss · 2006/08/04 · Comment · Link

Grand Jury Will Investigate Gretna Bridge Blockade

One of the reasons things got so bad in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was because of the Gretna bridge blockade. Hundreds of desperate people were prevented from leaving the city on foot by armed police from the city of Gretna, who feared property damage and violence. Although they had no state or federal authority to do so, police left the boundaries of their city and blocked the bridge, which crosses the Mississippi River and provided the closest route out of New Orleans from the Superdome and Convention Center.

The blockade will be the subject of a grand jury investigation in Orleans Parish, the local district attorney announced yesterday.

Gretna, a city of 17,000 that is the seat of Jefferson Parish, was described in 2003 as "Louisiana's most notoriously racist parish" by the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, a group that provides legal defense for indigent suspects in death penalty trials.

In October, the city of Gretna is encouraging thousands of New Orleans residents to cross the bridge and attend GretnaFest, a music and heritage festival that features performances by Eddie Money, Grand Funk Railroad and the Charlie Daniels Band.

Hurricane Katrina · Politics · 2006/08/04 · 8 COMMENTS · Link

New Wikipedia Subject: Kathy Sierra

All of the talk about last week's BlogHer conference reminded me of an effort I began last December to add overlooked female technologists to Wikipedia. In a discussion with Shelley Powers, I said that the encyclopedia is one area where gender disparity is easy to rectify. Someone just has to take the time to write comprehensive, neutral biographies that will pass muster with the site's editors.

A person's presence in Wikipedia tends to attract new bios for people of similar background and relative fame, as you can see by scanning the encyclopedia for any male techblogging publicity whore who ever trampled somebody in pursuit of a microphone. Writing a half-dozen bios on notable female geeks should spark other Wikipedians to do the same.

Towards that end, I submitted a new biography entry today on computer book author and recent OSCON keynoter Kathy Sierra:

Kathy Sierra (b. June 19) is a programming instructor and game developer who created the Head First series of books on computer programming with her husband Bert Bates.

The series, which began with Head First Java in 2003, takes an unorthodox, visually intensive approach to the process of teaching programming. Sierra's books in the series have received three nominations for Product Excellence Jolt Awards, winning in 2005 for Head First Design Patterns, and were recognized on Amazon.Com's yearly top 10 list for computer books from 2003-2005.

Sierra believes that her interest in cognitive science was motivated by her epilepsy, a condition for which she takes anti-seizure medication. "My interest in the brain began when I had my first grand mal seizure at the age of four," she wrote on her personal weblog

Before writing her first book, Sierra was the lead programmer on the computer games Terratopia, a 1996 children's adventure game released by Virgin Sound & Vision, and All Dogs Go to Heaven, a film-based game released as a free cereal premium by MGM.

Sierra was a master trainer for Sun Microsystems, teaching Java instructors how to introduce new Java technologies and developing certification exams. In 1998, she founded the programmer's community JavaRanch.

Sierra graduated college with a degree in exercise physiology and spend 10 years working in the fitness industry. She changed careers after attending programming classes at UCLA, later returning to teach a course on "new media interactivity" for UCLA Extension.

She lives in Boulder, Colorado with Bates, her daughter Skyler and several horses, including a rare Icelandic.

Bibliography

• Head First Java (O'Reilly Publishing, 2005) ISBN 0596009208
• Head First Design Patterns (O'Reilly Publishing, 2004) ISBN 0596007124
• Head First Servlets and JSP (O'Reilly Publishing, 2004) ISBN 0596005407
• Head First EJB (O'Reilly Publishing, 2003) ISBN 0596005717

External links

• Sierra's Creating Passionate Users weblog
• JavaRanch

I could use some advice on who to cover next, since the glaring omissions that immediately come to mind are a best-selling computer book author and syndication evangelist I've worked with professionally. Writing a bio on someone you know sparks an article for deletion war in which Wikipedians take numbers to rough up the person you covered for being insufficiently famous.

Wikipedia · Publishing · Programming · 2006/08/02 · 14 COMMENTS · Link

Final Push on the RSS Profile

I published a new draft today of the RSS Profile, a set of recommendations for how to best implement and support RSS. This profile will be proposed to the RSS Advisory Board for its approval on Aug. 28.

The profile is four months in the making and could be proposed today, but I'd like to hammer on it for four more weeks. I think it has the potential to become the second-most popular reference document in RSS.

Rss · 2006/07/27 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Hannah, the Little Embryo That Could

On the Senate floor, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback attacked stem-cell research by introducing the world to Hannah, the Little Embryo That Could:

We're talking about destroying the youngest human lives for research purposes. ... I hope some people that may be watching or hear about this -- that have frozen embryos, human embryos -- consider putting them up for adoption 'cause a number of people want to adopt them. The couple that adopted Hannah had infertility problems themselves -- could not conceive, IVF or otherwise -- and so they adopted her as a snowflake, as a frozen embryo implanted. And now we've got Hannah.

Brownback showed the Senate Hannah's self-portrait, where she's drawn herself as a smiling six- to eight-celled clump alongside two less fortunate companions:

This is her smiling because she got adopted and she's here. Here is another frozen embryo -- these are embryos -- that's sad because he's still sitting in a frozen state and then here's one that as she explains is saying "What, are you going to kill me?"

There are at least 400,000 unborn snowflakes that could potentially grow up to become props on the Senate floor. They exist because in-vitro fertilization produces as many as 12 embryos per couple trying to conceive, which clinics will store for a yearly cost of around $500.

The process of getting them donated to another family and implanted costs about $10,000 per snowflake, according to a Christian adoption group.

Only two percent of families allow their excess embryos to become somebody else's snowflake. The rest store them or allow them to be discarded.

Meanwhile, there are at least 100,000 snowchildren in the U.S. who need adoptive parents, many of whom will wait three years or longer. Here in Florida, 4,600 children need parents and could be adopted for as little as $500, which the state will often reimburse. Florida also pays their full college tuition.

Hannah beat incredible odds, surviving the 1-in-50 chance her biological parents would consent to donation, a 50 percent survival rate from the thawing process and a 65 percent chance of an unsuccessful implantation.

If you share Brownback's view that embryos are the "youngest human lives," in-vitro fertilization produces 52 dead, discarded or frozen snowflakes for each Hannah.

Politics · 2006/07/21 · 18 COMMENTS · Link

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