Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Forgot to Mention I Was on The Radio this Morning

Posted on December 1, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Forgot to mention that I was on Marketplace Morning Report today, since everyone else who knows about ICANN was already on a plane to Brazil. The item is just a “teaser” for the upcoming meeting, so it's very short.

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Posted in The Media | 1 Comment

Le Plus Ça Change

Posted on December 1, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Commenter Karen McL points us to this excellent, justly vitriolic, post by Glenn Greenwald, The Tom Friedman disease consumes Establishment Washington.

It skewers not just the internal illogic and moral cowardice of the Iraq war’s current (and past) cheerleaders, but reminds us that the same curious phenomenon that occurred after the Vietnam War is already playing itself out among the governing and chattering classes: the people who were wrong about the war try to claim that the people who were right about the war “too early” (i.e. from the start) should be treated by all right-thinking folk as political lepers.

Banquo’s ghost will not be banished so easily.

It does all remind me of the classic six stages of policy development (also sometimes called the stages of the product cycle):

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusion
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise and Honors for the Non-Participants

Posted in Iraq | 1 Comment

Washington Post Says Iraq Study Group Sorta Has a Deadline

Posted on December 1, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

According to the Washington Post’s Iraq Panel to Urge Pullout Of Combat Troops by ’08, the Iraq Study Group did not just hint around the Bush, but put an actual target date for withdrawal into its report: shortly before the ’08 Presidential election.

Even so, in this version — which makes it sound a bit better than the NYT version I blogged about a couple of days ago — the target date would “be more a conditional goal than a firm timetable, predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it.”

In other words, given Bush’s oft-expressed attitudes, fuggedaboutit.

Posted in Iraq | 2 Comments

Nice Graphical Internet Connection Speed Tester

Posted on December 1, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Speedtest.net is a snazzy graphical Internet connect speed test service.

Here are my results from home:

My results from work look as if they are much faster:

But in fact the delay before anything happens (latency?) feels much larger at work, so the office computer feels slower. I don’t know if that’s a DNS issue or what, but it’s very noticable.

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 1 Comment

Marmaduke Explained

Posted on December 1, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke solves the problem of finding humor in this remarkably horrible daily comic. At first I didn’t think the explanations were funny, but by the end I was roaring. It grows on you, like a certain type of near-surrealism. (Read at least a dozen before you give up.)

Wednesday’s post was entitled I Quit, which made me nervous, but fortunately Mathlete wasn’t serious.

Mathlete does not, however, explain how it can be that newspapers continue to carry this thing.

Posted in Completely Different | Comments Off on Marmaduke Explained

There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills …

Posted on November 30, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

My brother has a fun (and pugnacious) column up at Nieman Watchdog Blog bearing the gentle title of On Calling Bullshit:

Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do.

What is it about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert that makes them so refreshing and attractive to a wide variety of viewers (including those so-important younger ones)? I would argue that, more than anything else, it is that they enthusiastically call bullshit.

Calling bullshit, of course, used to be central to journalism as well as to comedy. And we happen to be in a period in our history in which the substance in question is running particularly deep.

…

But here’s the good news for you newsroom managers wringing your hands over new technologies and the loss of younger audiences: Because the Internet so values calling bullshit, you are sitting on an as-yet largely untapped gold mine. I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate bullshit-calling than a well-informed beat reporter – whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way.

Posted in Dan Froomkin, The Media | Comments Off on There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills …