Military blogger Colby Buzzell is going back to Iraq

Colby Buzzell, a military blogger who published the book My War: Killing Time in Iraq, which started as a blog, has been recalled to the Army to go back to Iraq, according to his blog. Colby has been in the Individual Ready Reserves since leaving active duty several years ago. Here is what he said in his book about if he was ever called recalled:

If I ever get a phone call saying, “Hello, Mr. Buzzell, this is the United States Army calling to congratulate you on being called back to active duty!” I swear to God I’ll say, “Dude, I’m way too stoned right now to be talking to you, hold on. Here, talk to my live-in boyfriend Stevie, and tell him exactly what you just told me, but make it quick, because me and him are about to make love to each other, now that these Ectsasy pills that we swallowed are kicking in.”

Clinton will change strategy from president to VP to unite party

The New York Times today said that the Clinton campaign realizes the race is over, no matter how Florida and Michigan decide to seat their delegates. The article specifically mentions that she will end it with a speech:

Mrs. Clinton has kept her counsel about what she might do to draw her campaign to a close and when she might do it. Her associates said the most likely outcome is that she will end her bid with a speech, probably back home in New York, in which she would endorse Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton herself suggested on Friday that the contest will end sometime next week.

Once she has dropped out of the race for president, there is speculation she will start the race for vice-president.  She must work to heal the Democratic party and help it prepare for a tough and possibly dirty fight this November against John McCain and the Republicans.

Death to the libraries… and everything not copyrighted

We could soon be approaching a world where the mighty power of the copyright rules all. Instead of death plus 75 years for copyrights, it could be for infinity. Creativity would be completely stifled if no one could use others’ materials. The first major casualty of this type of world would be the public library. How can a person check out a book that isn’t allowed to be viewed without purchasing first? Your local Blockbuster movie store will have movies, games and now…books to rent.

“Lending libraries in particular are in jeopardy if publishers take the same hard line that the music and movie companies have taken, because in a pay-per-view copyright regime, lending becomes impossible.” (Gilmor, 219)

From pandit to pundit, and all the problems along the way

We are currently in the midst of a transformation of what a pandit is. Its definition is a “respected scholar,” but I personally have very little respect for most of them. In the ’30s, the “punditry” was a small, select group of intellectual white men who discussed the major problems of the day. Back then, though, this country was isolationist, so very few of them supported taking any action against Nazi Germany as it began its blitzkrieg of Europe.

Investigative journalism is getting a new name: blogs

I visited my parents last weekend and spent some time watching a segment on a local tv station online titled “Does it work?” The show’s purpose was to take products shown in infomercials and to test them to see if the claims made about the product was actually true. Some of the products worked, some did not. One of my first questions about the show was if the makers of the products or the public relations firms that represented the products had had a hand in determining which products worked and which didn’t. In other words, did the companies represented on the news show use their advertising dollars as a way to manipulate the outcome of the product, whether positively or negatively?