hello typepad

"Earthtones: Music from the Latin Diaspora"

This is good.

Saddam's Oregon Connection

"It's assumed that it came from a car stolen in the U.S. and shipped somehow to Iraq," an Army source informed Chatterbox by e-mail. "But no one knows this, it's just speculation."

WMDs? No. 2Z-351? Yes! Timothy Noah from Slate has unravelling the mystery of the Oregon license plate (tagline: "Pacific Wonderland") that was found in Saddam's palace. Thanks to Jason for the links.

I <3 NY and XML nerds

--- Sam Ruby wrote:

1: I <3 NY
2: I &lt;3 NY
3: I <3 NY
4: I <strong>&lt;3</strong> NY

1: mode="xml" type="text/plain"
2: mode="escaped" type="text/plain"
3: mode="xml" type="text/html"
4: mode="escaped" type="text/html"

Your option 2 seems incorrect. I translate mode="xml" to be the equivalent of calling Inner Xml on the XmlNode object that contains the above content and mode="escaped" the equivalent of calling InnerText on said object. Using that reasoning your option 2 renders as "I <3 NY" which is probably not what the user expected.

Who says XML nerds can't have fun?

MP on Atom

Mark Pilgrim demystifies Atom's authentication over at XML.com.

I wish I didn't need to write this article. My life would be much simpler if Atom could just use existing HTTP authentication, as-is. But it can't; I'm going to tell you why and then I'm going to tell you what we're doing instead.

This the #1 advantage of Atom over Meta-weblog, XML-RPC.

A little bit on Race

Al Sharpton's appearance on Saturday Night Live must be one of the most over-analyzed programs ever, but Jen from The Gothamist still managed to find a fresh perspective:

It was depressing because as many of the skits became black–focused, it showed how we really don't see the black performers consistently (same goes for the Halle Berry hosted episode); many of the white players only appeared in a rather amusing sketch about the other Democratic candidates watching Al on SNL.

I don't watch enough to know, but that sounds right. When I do watch, I'm looking out for the one Black cast member to show up in the credits. Considering how many Black SNL stars go on to success, I'm surprised SNL's talent scouts don't go further out of their way to find more non-white(*) talent.

Ah, also, the fallout from Rasheed Wallace's interview with the Oregonian has offered us a useful opportunity to refute some common race-colored commentary we see in the Sports press and the rest of press. Here's Brian Meehan:

What TypePad wants

Someone has been indexing many (all?) TypePad sites. Here's his listing of hello. It's got a few bugs, but it's still useful and fun You can also search across his entire index (New York (82 posts), Snow (271), Bjork (0??), Sex (155), Fugazi (0??), Election (56)).

I want Atom, RSS 1.0 feeds of this!

Schadenfreude: Google shoes 1,270 matches for Bjork site:typepad.com.

Kucinich Feeds

Dennis Kucinich Weblog and RSS 1.0 Feeds. He gets the RSS right, I like him. UPDATE: They're not really 'right,' because there's no content, only links. This is totally annoying.

Loving New York

Anil recently wrote about why he loves New York City. Did you know Anil is such a romantic? He writes a mean weblog, but he's a big softy.

Calling out Dean's Tech People

The more I think about The Dean campaign's dismissal of Clark's new technology (below) the angrier I get. The Dean campaign sells itself as being the epitome of Democracy, amplifying the voices of the silent majority and turning that voice into frank talk on the issues. But if that's the case, shouldn't the Dean campaign not only be looking at Clark and Cam's new web site, but they should all be talking about building a web site to integrate all the feeds - Clark's Grassroots Page, DeanSpace and the Clark Community Network.

Dave Winer's been writing a lot about this, as has Lord Lessig.

It's still about beating Bush, right?

Sheed

But there is no ambivalence, no question about how he feels, in the strong language he uses to criticize the NBA and how it treats black players. In a league where all but one team owner and a vast majority of the decision-makers are white, a league where an estimated 80 percent of the players are black, race is always an issue just below the surface but one rarely discussed.

Rasheed Wallace has been my favorite player since the time I lived in Portland. I'm shocked but pleased to see an even-handed interview with him in the Oregonian. There's a thread over at Sportsfilter, where I talk a little more about my experience with Rasheed in Portland.