Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

Is this a surprise?

A good thing about a democracy is that it is difficult to muster the will to continue wars that are ill-advised and that fail to achieve results that are thought meaningful by the people who serve, and by their families.

In the short run, a democracy can field a force on the say-so of a president.  People will trust the president’s judgment.

In the long run, the people of a democracy make their own determination of the wisdom of fighting a particular war.  In the case of a war that proves unwise, the people often more willing than the president to admit their personal error in supporting that war. The people are willing to cut their losses and move forward into a new and better future, in part to save the lives of their sons, daughters, husbands and wives.  The people have little respect for the idea that new deaths are needed to “honor” those already tragically dead.

Sometimes, of course, the people of a democracy determine that a particular war is a “just war.”  In the case of WWII, a sense of justification grew as the war progressed and it became apparent that the price of war was worth paying.

In the case of the war in Iraq a majority of Americans question why we are figthing there.  They increasingly believe that this war is an unjustified waste of lives, futures, the health of a generation, family stability for millions of children of active-duty and reserve-duty (now called up) parents, emergency preparedness (Katrina), and billions in taxes paid by the people for this war. 

Here is something you perhaps should check out. Yahoo has put together a brief series of photos, mostly taken today or yesterday, in Washington (anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan arrested in front of the White House), and in Iraq (you can guess–more trouble).

I must say that Yahoo is becoming one of the most effective voices for bringing the troops home from Iraq now.

I don’t think that Yahoo is doing this intentionally, but I do think that Yahoo is allowing a fairly unvarnished view of reality through its increasingly-big-media lense.  And the result speaks for itself. Sadly.

Have you seen this? This new site being advertised very heavily in Yahoo email panes today.

Big screen graphics, production values like an action adventure flick. 

This is a big new direction for web media, methinks.

Here is the flash intro http://hotzone.yahoo.com/

Here is the narrative http://hotzone.yahoo.com/about

What IS this!

“Reality journalism”?

A journalist is sent to cover wars around the world..

 

Instead of the usual slick coverage, his producers package him like a real journalist..

a bit of history, OPML 1.0

The Guardian has a good summary here. Excerpt:

China announced a fresh crackdown yesterday on the internet amid further revelations of a plan by Hu Jintao, the president, to suppress dissent.

“The state bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest,” said a statement from Xinhua, the official news agency. The announcement called for blogs and personal web pages to “be directed towards serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests.”

Tribune (best photo, apparently no sub required!)

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050926/world.htm

Salon (subscription req)

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/09/25/protest/index_np.html

Merc (subscription req)

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/12737681.htm

SF Chron:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/09/25/national/a113202D72.DTL

You can find this list each week here.

Seems ripe for OPML.  People love to play these things..

The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost. (Abraham Maslow)

I spend a lot of time idly. I go to sporting events, play my clarinet. I practise. But if you work every day, a certain amount on a steady basis, the work accumulates. (Woody Allen)

From this wonderful site of quotations for artists, under the sub-category of “work.”

Plus one of my favorites, from memory, perhaps paraphrased:

Let me take care of the quantity, and God take care of the quality.  Julia Cameron

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“Cultural creatives” concept invented by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson.

Study of the “creative class” by Richard Florida

Gary Hamel has often talked about the problem of “strategic convergence” where products become more and more alike as firms focus on a few dimensions.  Big breakthroughs often come when a company finds a new dimension on which to innovate.

Perhaps the most important industry in the world right now is video gaming–it is setting the future of movies and television, of computer interfaces, and of education, and of–I hate to say it–warmaking.  And raise your hand if you have felt that the lead players, Sony and Microsoft, are starting to feel pretty much interchangeable?  The big point of competition these days is graphic rendering–especially the rendering of skin in “first person shooter” games.

Now if you don’t play games, what is the most difficult barrier to surmount?  Using the controllers.  And yet the game controllers for both Sony and Microsoft are nearly identical, and built for expert kids who can master four-button sequences while driving the small little mushroom thingy.

Well, Nintendo has moved ahead.  Here in the news today is a new controller, aimed at making participation in games as easy as pointing a remote at the screen.

http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=10579&filter=

Congratulations Nintendo.  Folks were counting you out, and here you come back in, from a new direction, innovating in a new dimension.

This just might be the iPod of gaming, the innovation that lowers barriers to entry to a much larger share of the population, and wildly expands the reach and penetration of gaming.

Here is another fun OPML contribution to OPMLsearch.com

The United States Constitution in OPML