Popdex Picks

Officials: 9/11 Was Main Reason for War: Well, no kidding? This is old news—the peace movement has been saying this for months—but at least ABC finally deems it worth serious mention.

Revealed: How the Road to War Was Paved With Lies: Yes! Yes! We know! So why doesn't this matter? Ah, gee, it's all just so complex. Let's go buy another dvd that glorifies war or promises that the American Dream is still alive. We'll think about important stuff like war and lying governments tomorrow. Perhaps instead of calling ourselves "Americans" we should call ourselves Candideians" or "Scarlett O'harans" because if we ever start to suspect that this isn't the best of all possible worlds we always seem to want to think about it tomorrow. Tomorrow may be coming faster than we think.

Gibson Kicks the Blogging Habit: William Gibson (author of the ground-breaking, perhaps genre-establishing Neuromancer and, most recently, Pattern Recognition) has given up his blog. I rarely found the time to read it, but when I did it was always worthwhile. It's ok, though; I'd rather have another book from him than a daily post on a weblog.

RIAA's Rosen 'Writing Iraqi Copyright Laws': This is rich. The leader of the "sharing is illegal" thugs is going to set up the intellectual property system in Iraq? Up next: Former Enron leaders will write the rules for financial reporting. Iraq is going to be one heckuva place to be a capitalist. But, um, perhaps Iraqis should get water and electricity first?

Posted May 1, 2003 07:10 AM | general politics