Just a quick post in the interest of a laugh. I was looking at
Instacracker (yea, yea), seeing what the freaks were linking to today. Turns out that we, er, I mean the Internet,
have defeated Al-Qaida in Iraq!
Promising to be vaguely amusing, I chuckled through the first bit only to spit-take my monitor upon this nugget:
... on the media front, the Internet was already becoming a major player. In 1998, Matt Drudge was showing that one person with a web site could break a major story. In 2004, a few bloggers were able to start the chain of events that led to Dan Rather's retirement from CBS. In 2006, bloggers are now an acknowledged player on the media battlefield. These efforts were dismissed by al Qaeda, and as a result, while al Qaeda hit its target, the effect was grossly minimized due to the fact that the "silent majority" now had tools by which they could be heard.
Yes, the vaunted warbloggers - I can't help but hum a few bars of The Battle Hymn of the Republic... Excuse me.
I have this vague dream of sending out a mass-mailer with wire and plastic wings, encouraging folks they can now fly, resulting in your standard turn of the 20th century flight "bloopers" (read as "horrible deaths"). Of course this sort of thing would never actually work, but I can't help but be heartened.