Declaring Victory and Pretending to Get (7 links)
Rising Hegemon
The LA Times reports the Bush Administration's new pretend to be cutting without running policy.
    this blog's community: the big brass alliance   

Remembering Israel's story (7 links)
Power Line
I've been thinking about Ariel Sharon's decision at age 78 to leave the political party he founded and run against...
    this blog's community: katrina relief bloggers   

Glenn McCoy (7 links)
Major K.
This one is from the Stars Stripes. It speaks for itself....
    this blog's community: milblogs   

Biden, Democrats Ask The Wrong Question (11 links)
Captain's Quarters
Senator Joe Biden writes an op-ed for today's Washington Post that gets the entire war on terror fundamentally wrong -- and demonstrates why the Democrats have entirely failed to provide any leadership on Iraq and the wider war. Along the...
    related topic: iraq   
    this blog's communities: the blogging tories   katrina relief bloggers   

Declaring Victory and Pretending to Get Out (7 links)
Eschaton
Attaturk's got the right idea. Certainly, as Josh says, thi

A PRO-FRAGGING PROFESSOR RESIGNS (7 links)
Michelle Malkin
Warren County Community College adjunct English professor John Daly, who advocated fragging American soldiers in an e-mail bullying conservative student Rebecca Beach over a speak
    this blog's communities: hurricane katrina bloggers   katrina relief bloggers   

TERRORISTS TOYING AROUND (7 links)
Michelle Malkin
Just sick.
More from Power Line in case you missed it.]]>
    this blog's communities: hurricane katrina bloggers   katrina relief bloggers   

Taking Terrorism Seriously (8 links)
The Washington Monthly
TAKING TERRORISM SERIOUSLY....After noting that the most dramatic charges against Jose Padilla — dirty bomber, apartment bomber, terrorist mastermind — have now evaporated, just as they did with Yaser Hamdi, Zacarias Moussaoui, John Walker Lindh and

Richardson Balks With Phony Draft (7 links)
Captain's Quarters
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has received plenty of media attention for his centrist politics and his national appeal as a possible alternative to Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Presidential campaign. That may now be over for the former college
    this blog's communities: the blogging tories   katrina relief bloggers   

INDOCTRINATION, NOT EDUCATION (8 links)
Michelle Malkin
Reason number 95,385 to keep your kids out of government schools (via the Boston Globe):
BENNINGTON, V
    this blog's communities: hurricane katrina bloggers   katrina relief bloggers   

Braggin' Bill Richardson (7 links)
Ace of Spades HQ
Did you ever start bragging, maybe expand the truth a little about your abilities, your net worth? You know, maybe tell the guys, some chick, that you played pro-ball or something like that? And did you ever get completely and...
    this blog's community: munuvians   

THE OAKLAND LIQUOR STORE ATTACKS (7 links)
Michelle Malkin
Shawn Wasson is covering them.]]>
    this blog's communities: hurricane katrina bloggers   katrina relief bloggers   

George Bush, Intergalactic Warmonger (7 links)
Power Line
I thought that liberals had accused President Bush of every possible offense, real or imagined, but no: a former Canadian...
    this blog's community: katrina relief bloggers   

Mexican Military Invades US, Steals Drug (7 links)
Captain's Quarters
In a disturbing incident that has received little national attention, the US Border Patrol found itself in retreat on US soil after interdicting a dump truck full of marijuana on US Interstate 10 last week. The truck made a run...
    this blog's communities: the blogging tories   katrina relief bloggers   

An Interesting Omission]]> (24 links)
Camp Katrina
Dozens of innocent Iraqis were killed and maimed on Thursday in a monstrous terrorist car bomb attack at a hospital, as reported in this clip from a story by the Associated Press: A homicide bomber blew up his car outside...
    this blog's community: milblogs   

Thinking about the thinkable (9 links)
Power Line
Daniel Johnson has one of the must-read columns today in the New York Sun: "Should Bush and Blair bomb Al-Jazeera."...
    this blog's community: katrina relief bloggers   

Friday Ark #62 (8 links)
Modulator
We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....? We will

In Other Breaking News (8 links)
Popagandhi
Woman fined for refusing to surrender roast geese at Changi Airport. Fined just about $2000 less than what someone paid for skipping Nat

THE WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS (8 links)
Michelle Malkin
Well, now that Thanksgiving's over, the anti-Christmas season has begun. Darleen Click shares the latest salvo.
    this blog's communities: hurricane katrina bloggers   katrina relief bloggers   

A Desert Father (7 links)
si johnston
Wow, so this is what blogging feels like? This space has suffered some willful and not so willful neglect over recent weeks. In fact, this has been the biggest blogging drought of my blogging career. With a new job (involving...
    this blog's community: blogdom of god   

The limits of multiculturalism (7 links)
Power Line
The ideology of multiculturalism combines nicely with mass immigration to provide the perfect recipe for national dissolution. In the new...
    this blog's community: katrina relief bloggers   

A NOBLE CAUSE (7 links)
Michelle Malkin
Today's Voice of Sanity Award goes to Akef Tayem of Dallas, Texas, who traveled to Crawford to counter Cindy Sheehan and her moonbat minions outside President Bush's ranch on Thanksgiving. Via
    related topic: thanksgiving 2005   
    this blog's communities: hurricane katrina bloggers   katrina relief bloggers   

Damn. My secret is out:

That's right folks, there has been a breach at NZ Bear's top secret computer facility. While I did not perform the breach, I have in fact received the source code to the new link counting system yet to be released...

However, I must object in the strongest terms possible to the slanderous acusation that the Ecosystem runs on a TRS-80 . Everybody knows I'm an Atari 800 bear.

See also: [Ecosystem] Errors I'd like to see. My personal favorite: ""(8) Want the good news or the bad news? You're just an Insignificant Microbe. That was the good news.".

As the blogfather says: Heh.

Plumbing the Depths of Evil (8 links)
Power Line
The depravity of our enemies is hard, sometimes, to grasp fully. Today's news includes this reminder of why there is...
    this blog's community: katrina relief bloggers   

"The M&Ms float crashed. Oh the huma (7 links)
Althouse
That's the reaction in the Pajamas Media live blogging when a Thanksgiving Parade balloon crashes and falls, alo
    related topic: thanksgiving 2005   
    this blog's community: the academy   

Be Thankful for Democracy (11 links)
Power Line
The optimistic title of Jennifer Harper's article in the Washington Times this morning is "Public Ignores Iraq War Naysayers." That...
    related topic: iraq   
    this blog's community: katrina relief bloggers   

Thankful (11 links)
Major K.
Much to my surprise, everyone here is acknowledging Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving has been the greeting of the day. This is in contrast to most other holidays since I have been here. Usually the only ones to do anything special have...
    related topic: thanksgiving 2005   
    this blog's community: milblogs   

I've been remiss in promoting Wizbang's 2005 Weblog awards. Nominations close this Saturday, November 26th, so get yours in while you can.

Open Source Media Pajamas Media (8 links)
Wizbang
Open Source Media, which launched to mild fanfare and lots of questions in New York last week, has pulled an about face and is rebranding their previous rebranding. They're returning to a name they actually own (Pajamas Media), but...
    related topic: osm: open source media   
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Folks:

I'm tracking Thanksgiving posts, so check back tomorrow to see what your fellow bloggers find to be thankful for this season.

- NZ

Update: A lesson on what is truly worth being thankful for, from Glenn....

Bush as Press Assassin?Baathist in a Mir (11 links)
Informed Comment
Bush as Press Assassin?Baathist in a Mirror The Mirror broke the story on Tuesday that a secret British memo demonstrates that George W. Bush wa

THE THANKFUL TREE (10 links)
Michelle Malkin
My latest column is up.
***
Ken Masugi reflects on Lincoln and Thanksgiving as a
    related topic: thanksgiving 2005   
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Bombing Al-Jazeera (9 links)
The Washington Monthly
BOMBING AL-JAZEERA....This goes right to the top of the "seriously weird" pile:President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals. But he was talked out of it at a White

The war they believe in (7 links)
Power Line
The only war the Democrats really have their heart in is the war to undermine the Bush administration. Any incidental...
    this blog's community: katrina relief bloggers   

The CNN Tape Exclusive on Cheney's (7 links)
All Things Beautiful
CREDIT FOR THE TAPE EXCLUSIVE TO BILL QUICK @ DAILY PUNDIT: "CNN Employee On Tape answering @ the CNN Headline News desk says: " Cheney "X" Is "Freedom of Speech" - "Tell Bush And Cheney To Stop Lying". "

CNN Employees A Bit Touchy About The Che (7 links)
Wizbang
Daily Pundit's Bill Quick shares the recording of a call made by some marketing wackos named Team Hollywood to CNN's Headline News desk. The poor schlub answering the phone attempts to engage the caller in a rhetorical argument about...
    this blog's communities: the axis of naughty   hurricane katrina bloggers   katrina relief bloggers   

Since I'm already annoying folks, I might as well keep up the trend.

My approach to filter out inline trackbacks is useful and appropriate, in my view, but it actually doesn't fully address an underlying issue. Here's the question: should a link from a blogger who has hundreds or even thousands of links to anyone and everyone on their page be worth exactly the same as a link from a more reserved blogger who only has a small number of outbound links?

In the Ecosystem right now, all links are equal. But I'm considering changing that. It doesn't seem right to me that if Blogger A links to 3,000 other blogs, and Blogger B only links to 300, that those blogs receiving the links from B get exactly the same "credit" as those receiving one of A's few thousand links.

A link is a recommendation; it says, "Go look over here, and you'll find something interesting." So should a recommendation from someone who says everything is interesting be considered as valuable as one from someone who seems to choose their recommendations with more care?

(As a historical footnote, way back in 2003 an early version of the Ecosystem actually had a separate ranking based on the # of outbound links a blog had. I called it the Hall of Link Sluttage).

Without getting into implementation details or an exact algorithm, suffice it to say that it would be simple enough for me to refine the Ecosystem's rules so that truly profligate linkers' links did not count for as much as more normal blogger's links. But would that be a good and useful thing?

I'm debating; now you get to as well. Let me know what you think...

Ok folks, time for some serious "inside-baseball" of the blog variety. If you've never heard of an "open trackback" or "link party", you should probably just skip right on by this post.

Recently, I've been noticing that the phenomenon of "open trackback" posts has been becoming more and more widespread across the blogosphere. Here's a few examples of open trackback posts.

It seems to me that the main motivation of such posts is simply to provide a quick and easy way for bloggers to generate links to each other, without any real regard for the substance of each other's posts. The links, rather than symbolizing and codifying the relationship between two posts, or two blogs, have become an end in themselves.

I believe the Ecosystem has created at least part of the motivation to do open trackbacks, and this troubles me. My goal has always been to reflect, as accurately as possible, what is truly popular and interesting in the 'sphere --- not distort it by creating bogus incentives for blogs to create automatic links to each other with no real meaning. If you don't believe me about creating the incentive, check out the Open Trackback Alliance:

1) What is the Open Trackback Alliance?

Are you tired of seeing?
I'm an
Insignificant Pond Scum Spore
in the
TTLB Ecosystem
.
.
.
The Open Trackback Alliance helps your blog ranking grow by increasing the links between each other's blogs and showcasing articles on one another's sites...

And guess what: it works. Over time, I've noticed that some bloggers are using Open Trackbacks to systematically work their way up in the Ecosystem rankings, and more recently, to ensure that their posts are flagged on my Top Posts pages.

So this weekend, I decided to do something about it. I implemented a simple solution: when the Ecosystem scans a blog's front page for links, it now simply ignores any inline trackback sections that are found, while still counting the links within posts or on a blog's blogroll.

I haven't announced the change because a) I was still debugging it and b) I didn't really think anybody would notice so quickly. But it turns out, Don Surber and some others are apparently watching my stuff so closely that they figured out what I was doing almost immediately (which, I think, says something in itself).

Don emailed me asking if it was true that I was filtering open trackbacks, and I responded that I was, but that I hadn't yet announced anything as I was still working on the system. A few minutes later, Don posted my email on his blog (without asking my consent, although I would have granted it). I'm also told that certain other bloggers (not Don) are emailing around trying to fire folks up about the grand injustice of it all. (There's even a petition).

Now let's be clear. If bloggers find value in Open Trackback posts, they should by all means continue to do them. But at the moment, I think the best decision for TTLB, and for the blogosphere, is to not count them in my system, and thereby remove the incentive to create trackbacks for their own sake.

But I'm always open to feedback, and would appreciate further comments and debate. So please, weigh in, even if it's just with a simple "You're making a mistake" or "I think you're right". I'm listening...

Update: See also, Link Sluts

The dust continues to settle on last weeks kerfuffle over Representative Murtha's demand for an immmediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But one of the most peculiar aspects is that many commentators on the anti-war side of the fence seem to be convinced that Murtha didn't actually call for an immediate redeployment, and that any statement to that effect is simply a Republican smear tactic.

For example, here's Libertine at TPMCafe:

Representative John Murtha, a decorated veteran of two wars and a very reasoned voice on foreign policy, had questioned the president's wisdom in our Iraq policy. What happened next is shameful. The republicans introduced a bill by Duncan Hunter that cynically called for just an immediate withdrawl without discussing the what our exit strategy should entail. They tried to misrepresent what Murtha was requesting we do, which is to have serious bi-partisan debate of our Iraq policy.

And the Seattle P-I's editorial board:

...more cynical was Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert's maneuver to ram a bill to the floor calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops -- not what Murtha had proposed at all.

Really?

Let Representative Murtha speak for himself. From the text of his speech on his web site:

I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United States occupation. I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a "free" Iraq.

Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.

Emphasis mine --- except the last phrase in all caps, which is as you see it on Murtha's web site

Which part of "immediately redeploy" are we misunderstanding? And to Libertine: it's nice that you think that Murtha's goal was to have a "serious bi-partisan debate of our Iraq policy." But if that was the case, why didn't he, er, say that?

He seems pretty darned clear on the whole "immediately" and "bring them home" part --- you will note his closing line does not read "IT IS TIME TO HAVE A SERIOUS BI-PARTISAN DEBATE ON BRINGING THEM HOME."

Revisionism, indeed....

PS: Yes, I've seen the text of Murtha's actual resolution. It doesn't say anything about a debate either.

More at RedState...