Today was the first day of Spring.  I celebrated with a bike ride.  It was a nice break from worrying about the world.

I watched the war on TV for a while today.  Most of the talk was about the technology used for reporting, like how amazing is it that we can send live TV from the Iraqi desert back to the U.S.  This did not impress me.  I was struck by how little actual reporting was taking place.

You want reporting, check this out.  BBC has a "reporters log" where all their correspondents post snippets of news as they're happening.  Should call it a reporters blog.  (Strangely, this page's URL changes with each post.  So you have to go to this page, hit refresh, then click on the "war diaries" link.  Sigh.)  This is much better reporting than you'd get from, say, the N.Y.Times website.  What's really interesting is that "the media" are adopting the blogging style.  Inside Ventura County has a great war blog (I live in Ventura County, BTW).  I think Dave's bet is looking good.  So does Reuters (looking way better than AP in this war, IMHO.)  So does the L.A.Times, amazingly...  (Remember, LAT links turn into fairy dust after 7 days.)

Just stumbled across John Lemon's Barrel of Fish.  Good stuff.  Sample: "Chirac shouldn't have any trouble saving face, since he has two of them".

Another good blog is the Strategy Page.  Sample: "The top three nations to whom Iraq owes money: Russia ($25B), France ($5B), and China ($5B)."  { Gee, I've read about those three nations somewhere before...  Note those are Bs, not Ms. }

I had missed this, but just found it; Tim Bray writes XML is Too Hard for Programmers.  Yep, it is.  And you know what that means, don't you?  (Hint: W=UH)

So, are you ready for some cricket?  I didn't think so.  But it is actually a fascinating sport, with its own language, and if you didn't know India is meeting Australia in the World Cup finals this Sunday.  I don't think it is Tivo-able, if anyone knows of a way to watch this in Southern California, please let me know.