Nearly everyday I visit a better-than-average tech news site, The Register, which tells it like it is with a good deal of irreverence and sardonic wit. Its slogan is “Biting the hand that feeds us,” i.e., they won’t hesitate to attack their own advertisers when called for.

So I was disappointed today to see them turn on Dave Winer for holding a blogging conference at Harvard’s Berkman Law School with an admission cost of $500. Yeah, it’s pricey, but the article implies that Winer is “fleecing” attendees and making out like a bandit. (He isnt.)

It’s quite interesting to read the nasty swipe and then read Dave Winer’s reply to it. (It will certainly get you thinking about The Register’s slogan.) You can decide which of the two is more noble.

I don’t disagree with all of The Register’s points about some who take blogging way too seriously, and the article has some great references to “Googlewashing” which, if you haven’t heard of it, is a must-read. It’s just that the writer filled his pen with a bit more venom than was called for when it came to Winer and the BlogCon.

Check out Adam’s sandbox, Brainysmurf, which now has a new face. While we’ll all miss that picture of Adam munching on a chunk of chicken at the Tianjin cafeteria, the new look is really nice.

Update: Adam, you need to fix those “Voices of Perspective” links!

The radio and TV news this morning is abuzz with a horrifying story that occurred Wednesday morning, when a technician at the National University of Singapore walked into a conference room packed with people, pulled out a paper cutter, walked up to a 47-year-old professor and slashed his throat. The professor died shortly afterwards. On his way out of the room, the deranged technician walked over to an administrative officer and slashed her across the face with his paper cutter.

Obviously, in ever-placid Singapore this is startling news. It takes up most of the front page of today’s Straits Times.

So, the question arises, why is there only a photo of the killer and a brief caption about it on the Straits Times web site? And no link?

The story gets shockingly disproportional coverage compared to the “big stories” on the web site. Click on the link for Singapore news and there’s no mention of it at all!! Instead, there are headlines for the truly earth-shattering stories, such as:

Upgrading of Marine Terrace is on track
A local construction company is seeking judicial management
Free flu shots for health workers

You get the idea. It’s as though, aside from the photo on the home page and a caption, this story doesn’t exist.

My theory: They (which always refers to The Government) want to do whatever they can to contain the story. Local news is heard locally (duh); once it’s on the Net with an active link it’s everywhere. By including the photo/caption, they can’t be accused of ignoring it. But by offering almost no text and no link, they drastically reduce the chance of the story being spread around worldwide. (Of course, that can’t work, because I’m sure it’s going to get picked up by the regional/international media. But I can’t come up with any other reason to explain it. )

If you were here and could see the local papers and TV news, you would see just how bizarre this really is.

This is a long-delayed trip to meet with former colleagues and pick up some of the things I left behind more than a year ago. I don’t expect to be on-line much at all, but one never knows.

I just watched the Bali bomber on TV rejoicing as he was given the death penalty and, in a sickening gesture, turning to the crowd in the courtroom to give them two thumbs up, his face beaming with an ear-to-ear grin. It’s at a moment like this that you realize just how dangerous these fanatics are (not that I ever really doubted that).

I am no big fan of the death penalty. But in this case, I am delighted, and hope that however they kill him, they do it slowly. Bastard.

How else to explain his hate-filled blast at the Anglican church over the gay bishop controversy? Just a little taste:

This is a dreadful event, a triumph for the forces of death over the forces of life. Robinson cheerfully acknowledges that he is an active homosexual. The Bible is perfectly clear that homosexual acts are sinful. Our Lord gave sinners strict and clear instructions: stop sinning, and repent your past sins. Robinson is in brazen violation of fundamental Christian doctrine.

It gets worse. He’s got to be doing a self-parody — doesn’t he?

These are the top headlines today:

1. Singapore composer is honored for his songs

2. High auto costs affect which insurance policies S’poreans buy

3. The prime minister will address the nation this weekend

4. Singapore nurses are playing a bigger role in health care

I am not making this up.

Now, if those stories don’t move earth and heaven I don’t know what will. And you wonder why I don’t blog as much as I used to?!

The BBC has a story out today about how Singapore parents often push their children to study and learn, resulting in a less-than-joyous childhood.

Andrew Wood, the editor of Teach magazine, a monthly journal about the Singapore educational system, says that traditionally, children in Singapore are put under a huge amount of pressure.

“Every parent seems to want their child to become a doctor, a professor or a government scholar, and that puts an enormous amount of pressure on children to learn things at a very early age,” Mr Wood said.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the case in many Asian societies? I know I saw it in China and Hong Kong….

UPDATE: BWG tells a similar story about students in HK, where some are pushed so hard they are apparently jumping out windows, which is definitely not a good sign.

Mark Kleiman has some thought-provoking comments on the subject, and I don’t think the topic is going away anytime soon:

Jane Galt objects to the release of the 28 censored pages about Saudi involvement in the 9-11 massacres on the grounds that, once we acknowledge publicly that the Saudi Royal Family was directly responsible for the murder of 3000 Americans, we will have no alternative but to go to war, conquer the Kingdom, and then face the rage of the “Arab street” at the spectacle of infidel boots marching through Mecca and Medina.

I don’t agree with her analysis, but she deserves credit for putting the real issue on the table; the Administration’s “protecting sources and methods” story just won’t wash.

Of course it won’t wash, but I am still shocked (though perhaps not surprised) over the lack of outrage at the Administration’s sloughing off the issue. Kleiman holds no punches and sees it, as do I, as ample grounds for rejecting Bush come November ’04:

Now an argument could be made — and it’s one I’m not professionally competent to judge — that the US national interest is best served by appeasing the Saudis rather than confronting them. That argument would be politically very unpopular if the report were released; that is why the Bush team is so intent on not releasing it.

But if this President is so incapable of leadership that his only means of restraining popular fury is to keep the public in the dark about who attacked us on 9-11, that’s the best argument I’ve heard yet for getting ourselves a new President.

Emphasis is mine.

Is anone getting this? Are we willingly going to allow the president to blindfold us?

It does seem, from these thousands of miles away, to be a politically extraordinary time in America. I’ve really never seen anything like it before.

If you have the patience to wade through her cutesy, tiresome, sing-song prose, larded with the same weary jokes she’s been spouting for years, you may find Maureen Dowd’s latest column downright shocking.

Dowd predicts with a steely confidence nothing less than the “retirement” of Colin Powell himself (along with Richard Armitage, for those who remember who he is) come Bush’s second term. If you know Dowd and her track record, you’ll know that for all the nonsense, she is extraordinarily connected and doesn’t make such pronouncements willy-nilly.

More shocking are her predictions for Powell’s replacements including the scourge of the early Clinton years, Newt Gingrich. (I really hope — I pray — that if he is nominated, someone will dig up the old interview with him and Phil Donahue in which he warns, with a totally straight face, how the US is in danger of invasion from….Nicaragua. Now, if that sort of prescience doesn’t qualify him to be SOS, what does?)