“The End of the American Century”

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The War in 2020 is a terrific read. I’ll bet I’ve read it every 4 or 5 years since it was published in 1991. Wikipedia classifies the novel as “military-adventure.”

“The novel begins in the year 2005, when the South African Defense Force, equipped and trained by Japan, seizes mineral-rich areas of Shaba Province in Zaire. The United States sends the XVIII Airborne Corps along with associated air and naval assets to repel the aggression. The American expeditionary force is defeated due to a combination of technological inferiority (the South Africans’ Japanese equipment has such innovations as onboard battle lasers,) lax security (a squadron of USAF B-2 Spirit bombers is destroyed on the ground by South Africans and local guerillas) and poor intelligence.

The American collapse is so swift that the XVIII Airborne Corps attempts to surrender. When the surrender offer is ignored, the American President orders a nuclear strike on Pretoria, forcing a cease-fire and a South African withdrawal from Zaire. The political cost paid by the United States is very high; post-war epidemics, and economic and political conflict with Japan reduces American power and influence. These events are summarized by a newspaper headline that reads: “THE END OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY”.

Author Ralph Peters tells a great story. If you’re digging Afghanistan and Iraq, you’ll love The War in 2020.

The Onion: Ennui Gas

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WASHINGTON — “Calling it the most effective tool to date in the War on Terror, the Pentagon announced Monday that it had developed a new chemical weapon called “ennui gas,” a nerve agent that overwhelms its victims with sudden philosophical distress over the meaningless tedium of human life and a sinking sense that everything they have ever accomplished ultimately amounts to dust.”

The Onion

Scott Adams on draft dodging

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“If a person is relatively certain that going to war will end his ability to enjoy the rest of his life, one way or another, and the war does not present a plausible threat to the homeland, is such a person unpatriotic for dodging the draft to save himself?

The obvious answer is yes, he is unpatriotic. If your country calls on you, you need to go. End of story.

On the other hand, what is the point of a being patriotic to a country that intends to kill you for its own marginal benefit? Such a country would be your natural enemy, not your friend, so any question of patriotism would be nonsense in this particular situation.”

Like most of Mr. Adam’s posts, this one is well written and thought provoking. You need to read the full post before answering the (for the time being) hypothetical question.

A less-hypothetical quesion: Are you willing to sacrifice your son or daughter because George W. Bush wanted to prove something to his daddy?

When is it time to unplug?

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From a Reuters story about a new grass-roots movement in which tech geeks, Internet addicts, BlackBerry thumbers and compulsive IMers are unplugging (if only for a day)

“I realized it was a problem when I would sit down to check my email and it was almost like I would wake up six hours later and find I was watching videos of puppies on YouTube.

“I’d try and think what I had been doing for the past two hours and I had no idea. I associate that kind of time loss with blackouts when you’re drunk.”

“I have dream blogged. I have surfed the Internet in my dreams sometimes. If I start hearing imaginary incoming message chimes on my computer when I am out in the back yard, it tells me I have spent too much time online.”

I’ve posted before that I can’t quite remember what I did before I started blogging. And it’s even harder to recall what I did before the Internet captured my attention (and time). That’s probably not a good sign. But what was I doing with my time before I got my first computer, sometime around ’85 or ’86?

Perhaps I’m just rationalizing, but I think the time I’ve spent online, blogging or reading blogs (and news), has been positive for me.

I’m less argumentative. Perhaps because I dump my views and opinions here and, somehow, feel less need to yak about them. I’m better informed about many more topics. I watch less television.

Some of my best friends are people I’ve met online.

But the greatest personal benefit has been the creative outlet. Bearing mind that “creative” is relative.

[Thanks, Chuck]

How long to lose your blog readers?

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The J-Walk Blog is very popular. For all the usual reasons. He writes well about interesting stuff and he posts every day. Usually several times a day. John Walkenbach (Mr. J-Walk) was called away to a meeting and didn’t post for a week. Upon his return, he checked his stats and did a little trending to determine he would lose all of his many readers in 17 days if he stopped posting altogether. One assumes it would take less time for blogs with fewer readers. I wonder how long –if at all- it would take for visitors to return. And why would they?

A few lines from last night’s 30 Rock

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“My cologne is distilled from the bilge water of Rupert Murdoch’s yacht.”

“When I find something I want, I don’t let go. Like a Killer Whale going nuts on his trainer at Sea World.”

“A stripper offered to give me a squeezer last night. A white stripper!”

“Save it for your iVillage blog.”

“If reality TV has taught us anything, it’s you can’t keep people with no values down.”

Right of the Dial (The Clear Channel Story)

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I’ve been around radio most of my life. My dad was a radio guy. I became a radio guy. And I was doing affiliate relations for our radio networks when things started to change in the late 90’s, when federal media ownership rules were relaxed and companies like Clear Channel started buying up hundreds of local stations.

BustedradioAlec Foege has written a book –Right of the Dial– that tells the Clear Channel story. According to the review in the New York Times, Foege tried to give the company the benefit of the doubt.

“I was not out to do a hatchet job,” he writes in the preface to “Right of the Dial,” “but rather to get to the bottom of a company that I suspected had gotten a raw deal as its bad publicity had snowballed.”

The reader need wait only three paragraphs before Foege renders his final verdict: “Having spent a lot of time talking to some of the company’s most prominent critics, as well as some of its most devout supporters, I have concluded that Clear Channel is indeed to blame for much of what it has been accused of.”

The Internet and iTunes and all the rest were going to have a big impact on radio, no matter what. But I have to wonder if local radio stations might not have been better prepared for the challenges if they hadn’t been gutted and commoditized by the Clear Channel’s.

Nawww.

[Thanks, Henry]

Popular Christian TV host comes out

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From Out & About: “Local Nashvillian and host of The Remix, a popular Christian youth show, Azariah Southworth, announced today that he has come out.

“This has been a long time coming. I’m in a place where I’m at peace with my faith, friends, family and more importantly myself. I know this will end my career in Christian television, but I must now live my life openly and honestly with everyone. This is my reason for doing this,” Southworth says.

Southworth has been hosting and producing the popular Christian TV show, The Remix for a year and a half. It is in syndication and can be seen in more than 128 million homes worldwide. It averages more than 200,000 viewers weekly on one of three networks.”

As I read this I recalled my recent exchanges with anonymous (ok, pseudonymous) political bloggers who justified blogging from behind the curtain with concerns for their jobs. Props to Mr. Southworth. That takes courage.

In search of radio’s romance, longing and connection

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From a speech by NAB President-CEO David Rehr at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference:

“Rehr then turned to radio, first talking about a widely reported BusinessWeek column by Jon Fine, headed “Requiem for Old-Time Radio.” Though Fine believes radio isn’t well-suited to moving its business model online, he wrote that he remembers radio with “ridiculous fondness” and recalled “huddling with it long past bedtime, the volume set low, hoping to hear something I loved.”

“Rehr said, “Ladies and gentlemen, that is romance, that’s longing, that is a connection. Listeners still want what they’ve always wanted. Technology hasn’t changed that — it has just changed the devices of delivery.”

According to Mr. Fine, Mr. Rehr missed the point of his article:

“You don’t need to huddle with a radio long after dark to hear new music; you can form that romance or connection with a hundred other things.”