General

Historian Stephen Ambrose, who is interviewed on the PBS News Hour today: “You can do whatever the hell you want. Who’s going to criticize you? And if they do, what the hell do you care?” [Scripting News]

Help me understand why?  I wrote a shitty letter to Major League Baseball. 

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link to metsonline.net. As a Mets fan since 1962, I think it’s great that sites like this exist and are flourishing. Like Bryan Hoch, the webmaster, I also run websites as a labor of love, and know there isn’t generally a whole lot of money left over after you pay for bandwidth. I totally believe Hoch, a college student, when he says he isn’t making money. The site clearly disclaims that it is not representative of the Mets or Major League Baseball. If you go deeper you see that Hoch contributed his time for free to help the Mets improve their own site, before all sites were taken over by MLB in 2001 (what a bad idea, why can’t teams differentiate themselves based on the quality of their community sites). Now of course there’s another side to it, so let’s keep an open mind. But to the owners of the Mets, please remember, it’s the fans that make it work, and it’s pretty clear that this website is from the fans, for the fans and the team, and that’s a good thing. [Scripting News]

Ok, so he acted like an idiot sometimes.  You have to admit the guy was at least pretty entertaining.

Traficant Gets 8 Years in Prison for Corruption. Los Angeles Times Jul 30 2002 2:43PM ET [Moreover – Crime and punishment news]

I looked at Moveable Type, and Gray Matter, and other blogging tools.  They’re all nice.  Moveable Type is especially slick.

I don’t like them half as much as I like Radio Userland.

With Radio, I can sit on an airplane – as I do far too often – and work on my weblog, my content, and read the news.  I can’t do this with those other tools.  That alone is worth sticking with Radio in my mind.  But there’s a thousand other reasons as well.

Dave’s right – Radio has more features….

10’s Links: “When and if I’m ready, I’ll move up to Moveable Type, hire Blogatelle, pay for a server, etc., but for now I enjoy this alternative.”

I’ve seen this too often not to say something. I think Radio has a lot more features than Moveable Type. Sometimes people confuse difficulty with feature richness. MT is designed to run n Unix, which means that it can be difficult for average people, because Unix already presents a high barrier. Radio is designed for Mac and Windows users, not developers (although it has deep features when you lift the hood), so it has to be easy to set up and use to work.  [Dave’s Handsome Radio Blog!]

Great, but short, interview about Adam Curry.

Is Adam Curry is a corporate MoFo? Look it up. And what a coincidence. I taught that exact word to Young Patrick Scoble yesterday. He’s going to Portland, OR today to teach it to his cousin. “;->” [Scripting News]

John Robb is an Air Force Academy Graduate (and COO of Userland Software, but that’s another story) – pretty interesting take on the recent air show crash in the Ukraine..

BBC.  Ukraine blames pilots for fatal air crash.  Frankly, this is the reason:  >>>According to a recent military report in Ukraine, air force pilots get roughly 20 hours flight time per year, a figure that is over 10 times lower than in most NATO air forces.<<<  It’s not the pilots, it’s the training.  I wouldn’t feel really proficient unless I flew 20 hours every two weeks!  Flying, particularly highly demanding missions, can kill you if you don’t train.  Even with all the training the US allows you to have, my estimate is that 4% of the people I went to school with at USAFA are dead due to flying mishaps.  That’s 35 out of the 870 that graduated in a class of 1,600.  I probably have five incidents that should have killed me (two big crashes — great stories to tell when sitting in a bar).  Luck and training saved my sorry ass. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]

Pretty good stuff happening over at Salon’s blogsplot.  I’ve already joined several blogs as a subscriber…

One thing I noticed about Salon blogs is that they are more literary than the blogs I normally read.  Excellent.  What’s great is that after less than a week from launch, these blogs already have significant traffic.  I bet Scott is one of the top five bloggers in the world in 4 months.  Most of the rest will probably be in the top 1000.  Not a bad place to be. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]