I Heard The News Today. Oh, boy.

I Heard The News Today. Oh, boy.

During some insomniac moments last night (or was that this morning?) while tuned to the international CNN channel [1], a report came with some unnerving news. According to the presenter, it seems the facts about deaths during war go something like this: More American soldiers have lost their lives in the Iraq conflict than in the entire first three years of the Viet Nam War.

Of course this may just be a nonsensical statement. After all, one can arguably state that Eisenhower was president when the Viet Nam War began.

Aha. A little Google digging and the news story is found [2]. That must be where CNN got it.

This story pegs the start of the Viet Nam War as December 11, 1961. So they give it a JFK-Administration start date.

Reuters also covered the story [3], as did ABC News online [4]. ABCís item was a report based on the Reuters piece. Of course, you know that Al Jazeera carried it [5], this being their sort of cheerleader news story. Some other news outlets also carried reports, in China, New Zealand, Switzerland, and a host of US newspapers. Hereís the Google link [6] if you care to do a look-see on your own.

Dubya is consistent: no matter how [7] bad [8] the news [9], he (and Cheney and Rummy) manage to characterize each and every setback, failure, loss or problem as an indication of how well his plan is working. Saddam is still roaming, uncaptured. Bush cheers. Bin Ladin remains at large ñ Cheney [10] and Rummy [11] go on Meet The Press, et al, to claim that their efforts [12] are keeping terrorism in abeyance [13].

Headed off to The UK, Bush no doubt is certain they love him, despite reports to the contrary [14] over there, and approve of Blairís cozying up to him. After all the British press says [15] just the opposite [16].

At this rate, maybe the gang of nine (the Democratic Wannabes) should all throw in the towel, and Al Franken should run. Hereís a guy who calls them liars, and substantiates it with evidence.

WOW ñ FEEDSTER DOES THE TRICK!
(or: how blogging gave me a headache and TMJ)

Iíve been struggling along with some blogging tech issues. How to get permalinks into this space, for one. Iíve had some excellent help, tech support, and suggestions from a variety of people. Those especially deserving of great big kudos and thanks in helping me along on this include Doc Searls [17] and Roland Tanglao [18].

In fact, I suggest other bloggers in need of some tech support give Roland a holler. He can be your consultant and is a pleasure to work with. Some tutorial time with Roland would be money well spent. And, on Rolandís part, money well earned!

The desired next step is to get Permalinks attached to separate topics, areas, subjects, whatever you call it. To wit, this titled entry, ìWow ñ FEEDSTER DOES THE TRICKî is a separate and different item than the one above, ìI Heard The News Today. Oh, boy.î

Each should be able to have a specific permalink attached. Surely this is do-able ñ one sees permalinks on all sorts of blogs. Why not here?

I use Manila, and am very happy with it as a blogging tool. But it seems permalinks require more Manila skills than possessed by this mortal Blogger. I also have used Radio, which at first seemed remarkable with ease-of-use. But then, as I got more aggressive and bold with my desires to spruce up and improve the blog, I found Radio required considerably more technical acumen than I bring to the party.

Roland was quite instrumental in showing me some methods for getting this accomplished, and Doc was very supportive, as well. Both had similar suggestions. Now if only someone would tutor me in actual application of Radio to the blog!

But taking the next step is such a challenge! I look at the help screens, the documentation, the on-line newbie boards. What do I see? A confusing, mind-boggling (bloggling?) set of instructions or suggestions or indecispherable suggestions on how to get this thing to work. Feh! Why are these things written with a presumption that users (such as yours truly) are clued in to the geeky, techie mysteries of coding, scripting, and other such endeavors?

But now, as I vent my spleen in frustration, what else do I see? In my referrer logs I see a feedster link. Clicking on it and looking around (really, I am inquisitive, I like to learn, I just donít grok this scripting/coding/software interaction business, it is not intuitive for me ñ whatís that sound, you ask? Teeth gnashing in frustration, thatís what) I go to some links and find that there is a Feedster analysis [19] of DeanLand that breaks down entries into the equivalent of permalinks!

3 Cheers For Feedster [20]!

Now if only I could figure out to do it myself!!! All help glady accepted, hint, hint.