The British press corps serves its market, in turn, by passing on every rumor someone tells a reporter in a bar. The result are lots of juicy stories, some of them true. As a former U.S. news editor told her editors after 9/11, when asked why her paper wasn't getting the great stories in the British press, "They're great stories. But they aren't true."

Then, of course, there are the Arab TV services, with their tabloid penchant for blood, guts, and heavy-handed emotion. They're reminiscent of the old-time U.S. press, when big-city journalism was a new industry.

All pathologies, all market-driven, but all mostly self-correcting. Even Al-Jazeera will eventually grow up. Or at least Chuck, who's wise in the ways of both the media and the Middle East, seems to think so. You should hear what he says about Arabic satellite music videos...

The uncropped photo is here.

One of FIRE's impressive recent initiatives is a series of guides to help college students know what their rights are and how to protect them. The series currently includes guides to religious liberty; to student fees, funding, and legal equality; to due process and fair procedure on campus; and to free speech on campus. In May, FIRE will publish its guide on first-year orientation and thought reform, which was the subject of Alan Kors's memorable cover story in my final issue as editor of Reason.

You can download the guides as .pdf files for free or order commercial-quality paperback copies for $3.95 each (free to students).

I do have a couple of Dallas-related postings on the new D Magazine group blog, Front Burner. I learned from Front Burner that NR's Rod Dreher is moving to Dallas to join the Morning News editorial page staff. Perhaps he has a comment on this photo, taken outside a North Dallas fabric store:

Speaking of Movable Type, a spiffy new Dynamist.com site design, including a Movable Type-based format for the blog, is coming next week. Adrian Quan is the designer. [Posted 3/27.]

Update: Jane Galt confirms the boos (but she didn't email me about them). [Posted 3/24.]

Having spent the better part of a decade working with very creative tech execs, I have come to the simple conclusion that money often makes us stupid—and less creative. I believe that the real bursts of creativity are happening now—now that capital is so dear. Seems to me, the people who are not sitting on the sidelines waiting for recovery are now acting with incredible discipline and creativity to overcome the hurdles of today's economy. They are more actively addressing the needs of their customers—and they are more actively seeking ways to do more with less. Speaking as a customer myself, I have NEVER been treated so well.

By contrast, the plenitude of capital in the dotcom economy made us "stupid"—less creative relative to our available resources. Companies became self-absorbed as opposed to market-driven. They were creating things on the come instead of on-demand. They simply wanted to create stuff once and sell it many times instead of reaching out to a customer, building a relationship and then selling that customer many things, many times.

Now we see fewer self-styled visionaries. The VCs, who propped them up, have left the building. Nor do we see executives "checking out" after they have hit their IPO milestones—when they've gotten their "fuck you money," in other words.

Instead, I think the real creative missionaries come to life in down economies. They did in the late 80s/early 90s. They start to do the things we should have done all along. Take marketing. Instead of buying Super Bowl ads, for instance, they invest in cost-effective "guerilla-marketing" campaigns. In my opinion, it's more creative to do your marketing on a shoe-string than it is to hire some high-falutin' ad agency to create sock puppets.

No doubt, we had a burst of creative work during the dotcom boom—and much of it remains with us. The more relevant metric is how much creativity we get relative to a dollar invested in new companies, initiatives, products, services. By that measure, the dotcom economy was a bust—and, I believe, the present economy is actually far superior. I also believe we will see the flowers of this down-market creativity begin to bloom in the next 2-3 years. That's the stage the market cycle reaches its "optimal" state—somewhere between drought and decadence.

And if you don't want a change of pace from war, keep in mind that U.S. military superiority depends on a strong and technologically advanced economy. [Posted 3/23.]

But now—after Iraqi forces have mounted stiff resistance in several cities, killing at least six Americans and taking at least five U.S. soldiers prisoner—the war is beginning to look longer and more costly than some Americans expected.

Who are these "some Americans" who expected a war shorter, and with fewer casualties, than the L.A. riots? Here's the story's answer:

A Gallup Poll of Americans produced for CNN and USA Today found that two-thirds of respondents said they expected the war to last less than three months; one-third said they expected it to be over within a month; and most thought that fewer than 100 Americans would be killed or injured. Those were significantly higher levels of optimism than the same pollsters found before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Yes, we're all more optimistic than we were before the Persian Gulf War, which began with post-Vietnam fears of tens of thousands of Americans dead and years of brutal fighting. But optimism is merely relative. And "less than three months" is not "less than three days."

What we saw today was that this is a real war. Nasty, brutal, and we can only hope, short. All we've been promised is victory—and that's a promise, among other things, to persist when things get tough. [Posted 3/23.]

RICHARDSON—A 20-year-old photo that hangs on a wall of the Haji family's comfortable suburban home offers a telltale glimpse of a long and tragic drama. The picture shows a young, lean Karim Haji as an anti-Saddam Hussein guerilla fighter, clasping an AK-47 in the hills of the Kurdish enclave of northern Iraq.

At the time, dozens of Mr. Haji's clansmen and relatives, including a beloved brother, had been murdered, gassed and repeatedly driven from their homes in the Iraqi dictator's zeal to suppress all perceived threats to his hold on the country.

Mr. Haji is 46 now, a bit thicker in the middle after a decade of comfortable North Texas living, the father of seven children and husband of a wife grateful for his opportunity to make a decent living as a gas station manager. But Mr. Haji practically bolted from the comforts of his adopted home when presented recently with a chance to don a military uniform once more for a final confrontation with his old nemesis.

The Richardson resident is, until very recently, was stationed in Kuwait with American soldiers preparing for invasion. Mr. Haji is one of dozens of Dallas-area Kurdish and Iraqi expatriate civilians—hundreds nationwide—who have volunteered to help American soldiers wage war and peace as translators, POW guards, guides and in post-conflict humanitarian aid operations....

The effort includes thousands of Kurds and Iraqi Shiite Muslims who accepted preferential immigration terms extended to them in 1991 after the disastrous defeats of their American-encouraged rebellions against Mr. Hussein. Those expatriate communities, including an estimated 7,000 in North Texas, comprise rare enclaves of Americanized, multilingual Muslims who support war against Iraq's regime.

Kurdish exiles are everywhere in the U.S., even in Dalton, Georgia, where my pal Charles Oliver profiles 26-year-old Dara Rasheed.

"One hundred percent of the Kurdish people hate Saddam. They call him Hitler 2," Rasheed said.

In 1988, Saddam attacked the Kurdish village of Halabjah with poison gas, killing 5,000 people.

"That village was an hour from where I lived," Rasheed said.

Some Americans don't realize just how brutal Saddam is, Rasheed said. He said that Saddam will force the families of his enemies to watch as they are executed.

After the first Gulf War, Rasheed's father worked for an international agency helping to rebuild the Kurdish villages Saddam had destroyed.

The family heard that Saddam's forces had threatened to kill all those who had worked for Western agencies if he came back into control of northern Iraq.

So the family fled to the United States. They first chose to go to Chattanooga because family friends already lived there. They eventually settled in Dalton, after hearing about it from other friends.

[Posted 3/21.]

Now Al Gore has joined the Apple board. Some people look at Gore and see a nerdy Democrat. I see the guy who blurbed Algeny, so "pro-technology" he's anti-technology. Either way, he's no business genius (certainly not a Yoko-caliber profit monger). The appointment represents some combination of political favoritism and image making.

Maybe I'm nuts, but trying to grow your market share by excluding everyone who doesn't share hippie-dippy Bay Area politics strikes me as a dumb strategy. Of course, there is a way to make amends: diversify those black-and-white portraits. Nominees? [Posted 3/20.]

The red carpet survived World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, not to mention September 11, but it can't survive Iraq? I suspect a different motive: the commercial powers that be have wisely concluded that interview after interview with antiwar stars would turn off the American viewing public.

Either that, or it's a vast Conde Nast conspiracy. As a Harry Winston executive told the LAT, "I think the people who will benefit the most will be the Vanity Fair party-givers. If Vanity Fair has its party, that will be the red carpet." [Posted 3/20.]

All contributions made to this site in March, minus Amazon and PayPal fees, will go to Operation Homefront. And if you're in San Diego or El Paso, check out the needs for in-kind donations and volunteers. [Posted 3/20.]

[Talk show host] Roger Hedgecock (here in San Diego), is helping to promote Operation Homefront, which is getting needed stuff to the families of our military.

Granted, it's limited to the San Diego area (and Camp Pendleton), but since we have some extremely large bases here (Miramar Marine Air Station, Naval Base San Diego (also called "32nd Street"), Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado (home of the SEALs on the west coast), Camp Pendleton...and probably a couple minor ones I'm forgetting), Op Homefront is covering a lot of people.

"A lot of sacrifice goes on within an entire family when one member of that family is in the military," said Sandy Bowen, the interim director of Military Outreach Ministries, which provides food, furniture, clothing, and other services to hundreds of Navy and Marine families in San Diego Country each month. "These people are our neighbors, and they are sacrificing a great deal in order for their spouse to protect our country."

Bowen sees the people her group helps, most of whom are 18 to 24 years old, as no different from any other young, high school-educated workers trying to better themselves.

"They are moving upward. They are proud to be in the military, and they are taking charge of their lives," she said.

It's often not an easy journey. There are the women who call a week before payday, out of money and needing baby formula. The family that lived in a tent on the beach as they waited to get housing on base. The woman, 8 months pregnant, who was sleeping on an air mattress and called wondering whether she could get a bed.

"You learn to buy cheap and never off-base. You take hand-me-down clothes, clip coupons," said Mollie Stuckey, 25, who brought her 6-month-old daughter to the recent food and clothing giveaway at Camp Pendleton sponsored by Bowen's group.

"Half the Marines I know work part-time jobs in town," she said. "Pizza delivery, bartenders, jobs at night that have flexible hours."

Bravo for the post-Tribune-merger LAT for publishing this regional story, which is hard to imagine under the previous regime. But the story leaves out obvious information: How can readers help? The groups mentioned aren't much better. Via Google, I found out that Military Outreach Ministries is a program of the local presbytery (the Presbyterian church's equivalent of county-level government) and that it's looking for someone to fill that director's job. I didn't, however, find out how someone who isn't a San Diego Presbyterian might contribute. And the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, a national nonprofit group, seems to limit its fundraising to service members. If anyone has further information, please let me know. [Posted 3/18.]

Among heaps of musty affidavits about contract disputes and unpaid debts, the archivests have uncovered 283 "freedom suits" filed in St. Louis from 1806 to 1965.

Decades before Dred Scott became the most famous slave to sue for freedom, the imposing, domed courthouse here echoed with the defiant voices of Tempe, of Ralph, off so many others who refused to accept their bondage. They dictated their petitions to lawyers or clerks and signed them with faltering Xs in black ink. "He has frequently abused and beaten her, particularly yesterday." "Unlawfully an assault he did make in and upon her."

Before this cache of documents was discovered, historians had no idea how many slaves had put their faith, and their fates, in the courts. They thought Dred Scott was an anomaly. Now, they are uncovering evidence of an underground grapevine that passed word about the freedom suits from slave to slave, emboldening men and women and even teenage children to sue.

Dozens won their cases, persuading juries of 12 white men to set them free. A few even won damages against their masters.

These records, which are online here, help explain why Dred Scott was such a tragic shock to slaves and slavery opponents: It not only laid the legal foundation for the Fugitive Slave Act, which forced slavery opponents to participate in returning blacks to bondage. It also declared that the rule of law, a fundamental principle of American government, simply didn't apply to blacks. [Posted 3/18.]

Of course, Oscar isn't exactly a soft target. Even before 9/11, the Academy had to protect the stars from the fans, and Hollywood instituted further precautions last year. After September 11, Angelenos assumed they were next. When no attack came, they looked egotistical for making that assumption; they've since grown complacent. Better, however, to look foolishly self-involved (something Hollywood knows a lot about) than to invite terrorism. [Posted 3/18.]

Update: Apparently that T-Mobile service in Starbucks does let you send email. I just had some settings wrong yesterday. [Posted 3/18.]

I haven't been back to L.A. in months, and I wasn't sure I'd like it as much now that I'm more or less acclimated to Dallas. Wrong. I got out of the cab, breathed the soft air, looked at the evening sky (oddly enough, you can see more stars in L.A. than in Dallas), and thought, "Ah. This place is just as great as I remembered." And you can get a lot more work done when you don't have to think about the weather. [Posted 3/13.]

Some people think Californians are relatively sanguine about terrorism because they live far away from New York and Washington. I think it's because they're used to living with a constant threat of death and destruction that will strike without warning. Every time you drive under an overpass, enter a parking garage, or cross a bridge in L.A. or San Francisco, there is a small but ever-present probability that it will collapse in an earthquake and kill you. Every time you go to bed, there is a larger probability that you'll be jolted awake by the house shaking. It's a relief to be able to arrange furniture, particularly bedroom bookshelves, without worrying about what might happen in an earthquake.

It turns out that residents of San Francisco and Los Angeles are more prepared for disaster than other American urbanites. The LAT's Richard Marosi reports on a Duracell/Harris Interactive study of disaster preparedness:

Forty-eight percent of households in Los Angeles—the highest rank among America's 10 largest cities—said they have a disaster plan.

New Yorkers are the least prepared, though they are the most fearful of terrorist attacks, according to the poll.

The poll also found that even though residents on the earthquake-prone West Coast are more prepared, the majority of households still don't have a family plan for dealing with a disaster.

Only 36% of households nationwide reported having a disaster supply kit in the home. In Los Angeles, 49% said they had kits; in San Francisco, 57%. The kits usually contain food and water supplies, flashlights and a portable radio.

If I have to reduce it to two factors, I love (Southern) California for the amazing sunlight and for a culture that encourages people to strive to do great things. Dallas is full of strivers, but they're mostly striving for success, measured primarily in material wealth. Like power striving in Washington and status striving in New York, that isn't as interesting to me, in part because it doesn't engender such individualistic definitions of success.

On the down side, the government of California is truly dysfunctional. It's a wonder the whole place doesn't collapse. [Posted 3/7.]

On a side note, Galileo's elder daughter, the subject of Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, was originally named Virginia. She took the name Maria Celeste, in honor of her father's cosmological studies, when she entered a convent. [Posted 3/7.]

And yet many experts had doubts about the AOL strategy from the start. In any merger, says [Wharton management and economics professor Daniel A.] Levinthal, the key question is whether it will accomplish something that could not be done more simply in other ways.

For example, in announcing the merger, executives of the two companies said they wanted to provide America Online's Internet subscribers the music and publishing information offered by Time Warner, and to use Time Warner's cable operations to deliver that data online at lightening speed.

Much of this, according to Levinthal, might have been accomplished with licensing agreements and joint ventures, while keeping the companies separate. That would have avoided all the difficulties of blending two very different corporate cultures, and it would have made it easier to abandon joint projects that weren't panning out.

"The fact that there is a potential leveraging doesn't automatically mean there ought to be a merger," he says. "There can be a big gap between the latent economic opportunities and the organizational challenges to making it happen."

The article's best passage is this one:

Gerald R. Faulhaber, professor of business and public policy and management, says that when the merger was announced, he and many other experts assumed the real motive was for AOL to get access to Time Warner's cable systems, even though the companies emphasized their goal of offering Time Warner's content to AOL customers. "Turns out we were wrong and they were telling the truth," Faulhaber says. "They thought it was about content ... I never thought that made any sense whatsoever."

AOL didn't need to pay a fortune for content, he says, since many content providers were eager to be on AOL. Many, in fact, were paying for the privilege. "I think the merger in some sense caused them to focus on the wrong stuff," suggests Faulhaber, who was chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission while it was evaluating the proposed merger. American Online "tried to become a content company. I think it was a huge mistake for them to do that."

[Posted 3/7.]

While hundreds of Internet startups are dying or selling out after nearly three years of being pummeled by the rotten economy, many of the technologies they created are destined to live on and play important roles in the future—either via acquisitions, in new startups, or through copycatting by the industry's giants. Think of it as a mammoth recycling project. "The company is the most ephemeral institution in the information technology world. The people are perennial, the technologies are repurposed, and the products find new homes in surviving companies," says Geoffrey A. Moore, chairman of tech consulting firm Chasm Group in San Mateo, Calif.

Although the boom is remembered as a time of frivolity and excess, it was also a bountiful gusher of business creativity. Nearly 6,000 tech companies were financed by venture capitalists, and since there was little pressure to achieve profits in the short term, entrepreneurs were given permission to dream—and in some cases, hallucinate.

Sure, plenty of ideas were silly. But the era also produced an abundance of ideas that were mind-bending, even if their inventors didn't survive as independent businesses. Take ICQ, the instant-messaging pioneer, which flourished after its 1998 sale to America Online. In many cases, the challenge facing the new caretakers of these innovations is to take a potentially world-changing idea and give it business legs.

For another take on creative foolishness, see my NYT column on John Nye's theory of "lucky fools." [Posted 3/7.]