Escapism

I’m on leave this week and this morning was crisp and sunny. So we decided to go to Norfolk for the day. Best decision I’ve made in ages. It was beautiful up there — and mostly deserted, except for the birds. We had lunch in the incomparable Titchwell Manor Hotel and then a long walk in a biting wind on Brancaster beach.

What’s wonderful about that part of the world is its vast and ever-changing skyscape. People are always sneering that Norfolk is flat. They’re wrong. Noel Coward (who first made that joke about the county) has a lot to answer for.

Roger’s Big Day

On Sunday, I devoted my Observer column to Roger Needham, one of the great computer scientists of our time. I spent yesterday at an event organised by the Cambridge Microsoft Lab to celebrate Roger’s 50th year in Cambridge and his 5th as Director of the Lab. Amazing to see some of the great names of the field all gathered in the same room. Chuck Thacker, the man who built the Xerox Alto, was there, for example. Butler Lampson gave a masterful presentation about the impossibility of using software components in any of the hyped and advertised ways. Listening to him, I reflected that what marks out the really great figures in a field is their ability to confess to ignorance: everyone else is too insecure to admit to it. Ross Anderson gave a bravura presentation showing how the entire architecture of banking security is, in fact, built on sand. Which makes one think: what now? Do the banks write off the billions they have invested in their current infrastructure and admit to the problem? Or will they try to rubbish and defame the awkward messenger who brings us these gloomy tidings?

Rick Rashid, the Microsoft VP in charge of research, gave a nice talk at the end, and then it was Roger’s turn. He talked briefly about the importance of theory in computer science. And then he put on a hard hat and said “But at heart I’m still an engineer”. It was a wonderful, moving moment, and he received a standing ovation from an audience which loves and appreciates him.

Why Blair has got into such a mess

The problem is that there are two separate issues/problems: 1. The New Terrorism — based on religious fanaticism and using operatives who are suicidal; and 2. Saddam Hussein and his regime.

On 1, Most people in the West are, I believe, sympathetic to their governments as they struggle to address this very real and novel threat. People who point towards, say, British sang froid in the face of IRA terrorism miss the point, which is that Bin Laden terrorism is radically different. The IRA mostly gave warnings, and their atrocities were committed by people who desired to live to be grandparents even as they denied that privilege to their victims.

But the new threat is so shadowy at present that it’s difficult to mobilise public opinion into taking it as seriously as it should be taken. We have no civic experience of biological or nuclear weapons, dirty or otherwise. Nor have we much experience of suicide bombers. So it’s understandable that governments are having a hard time persuading people that the danger is real and tangible.

Nevertheless, my feeling is that most citizens are willing to go along — to put up with all kinds of intrusive security measures in order to deal with the terrorist threat. But where Blair has blown it is in mixing all this up with Iraq. Again, most people find Saddam repellent — indeed they probably think that the US should have finished him off in 1991 and wonder why he was let off relatively scot-free for over a decade afterwards. But they see the Iraqi problem as quite distinct from the new terrorism problem, and resent the fatuous attempts being made by the Americans and their British satraps to pretend that the two can be conflated.

The Digger wants a war. And so do his editors. Well, well

Their master’s voice. Rupert Murdoch argued strongly for a war with Iraq in an interview this week. Which might explain why his 175 editors around the world are backing it too, writes Roy Greenslade. [Guardian Unlimited]

Karlin Lillington on the decay of CNN

CNN, once a groundbreaking news organisation in its ability to get under a story’s surface, seems to have become one of the worst for bombast and bias. Certainly on September 11 my family soon could not stand the insensitive, hype-packed coverage of that event as covered by CNN and switched to other networks,  and it just seems to continue to disimprove, selling itself out to that dread creature, ‘infotainment’…: CNN transcript is cut a bit short. “On Friday the 14th of February CNN.com presented a “transcript” of Hans Blix’s presentation to the U.N. Security Council concerning the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq. Comparison with other transcripts, notably that presented by the BBC , reveals that a substantial section of the presentation was omitted in the CNN version. The missing text includes descriptions of important instances of Iraqi government cooperation and presents a relatively favourable picture of inspectors’ access to scientists.” [kuro5hin.org] [[ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]]

Google buys Blogger — and the implications of that

Insightful article by Neil McIntosh on the implications of the Blogger deal –and fears that Google might use its ownership of Blogger to obscure other blogging hosts.

From Scott Rosenberg in Salon: American people support France, Germany over Bush!
“Much remains up in the air as I write this: Will the Bush administration barrel forward with its Iraq invasion timeline in the face of international opposition and domestic uncertainty? If it does, is the war a blitzkrieg or a quagmire? Either way, does the U.S. have the will or the interest to commit long-term resources to rebuilding Iraq afterwards?

One thing, however, is now beyond dispute: President Bush has shattered whatever popular consensus he forged or inherited in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The press, which tends to discard conventional wisdom only slowly and under duress, is still suffering a hangover from the grim autumn days of 2001 — a notion that Bush has achieved wide popularity and deep respect as a leader able to pull the nation together at a moment of crisis. One look at the latest polls shows just how fully that vision of Bush now lies in ruins.

The New York Times/CBS poll released today show’s Bush’s approval ratings now down to almost exactly where they stood before 9/11 — a moment, let’s remember, when the Bush presidency seemed rudderless and statureless: 54 percent approve, 38 percent disapprove of the job Bush is doing. These numbers have dropped nearly 10 percent in the last week. Even worse for Bush are the “is the country on the right track” numbers: down to 35 percent “on the right track” versus 56 percent “on the wrong track.”

The other headline here is that, though the American public continues to support war against Iraq by about a 2/3 margin, and supports “the way Bush is handling the situation with Iraq” 53-42, the majority also continues to feel that the U.N. and inspections should get more time: When the poll asks, “Should the United States take military action against Iraq fairly soon, or should the United States wait and give the United Nations and weapons inspectors more time?” 59 percent support the latter choice. (That’s 10 percent more than voted for Bush in the first place.)

Dear reader, what this means is that the majority of the American people agree with the “perfidious” French and Germans and disagree with their own administration.

Somehow this little fact does not bubble to the surface of most of the press coverage of the current crisis. The media are locked into a template established in the wake of 9/11: International crisis looms; President Bush proposes resolute action; the American public rallies. That worked in the months after 9/11 because the resolute action proposed (a war upon al-Qaida’s Taliban sponsors) made sense to the public as a response to the World Trade Center attacks. As Bush tries to repeat that performance today, the public is not going along — probably because the response does not make a whole lot of sense and does not seem to accomplish what should be our central goal, reducing the threat of terrorism and making the United States a safer place.

Now, polls are fickle, and one doesn’t want or expect a leader to make decisions based on them alone. But when an American leader pushes a risky and potentially difficult war, he needs more than a thin and confused margin of support — support that isn’t even really support once you look at it closely. That was the lesson of Vietnam.

Oh, I forgot — Bush wasn’t there.”

[Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment]

Google as Big Brother Mk II?

Intriguing piece outlining a number of ways in which Google’s gives rise to concern about surveillance and privacy. One conclusion: put a “noarchive” tag on every page if you want to retain the ability to delete questionable pages at some time in the future. Otherwise they will live on in Google’s cache.

Tim Adams on viral marketing and tipping points

Typically thoughtful piece by Tim on the way ideas spread nowadays.

The view from 90,000 feet: Roger Needham on the central issues in computer science

Masterful, succinct summary.