quote from msnbc weblog central:

"Ostensibly based in Baghdad, Where is Raed? is written by a person blogging under the pseudonym of Salam Pax, a tech-savvy Iraqi whose mastery of English provides for vivid descriptions, cutting wit, and thoughtful commentary. In the past there has been some discussion of the veracity of the writer?s claims, but those appear to have been resolved, with several bloggers offering testimony to Salam?s authenticity ?and frankly, the more you read, the less doubt there seems to be."

Where is Raed ?

] "Steve and his team have done an incredible job in making
] Apple once again the very best in the world," Gore said.
] "I have been particularly impressed with the new Mac OS X
] operating system and the company's commitment to the
] open-source movement. And I am especially looking forward
] to working with and learning from the great board members
] who have guided this legendary company's inspiring
] resurgence."

Al Gore joins Apple's board | CNET News.com

I'll second that recommendation - Yes, check it out, even if only for The Gallery of Regrettable Food!

LILEKS (James)

] As a young girl, Pauline Oliveros was fascinated with the
] crackly sound of her grandfather's crystal radio and the
] whistles and pops of her father's shortwave.

one of avant garde music's constant pioneers.

50 Years Melding Tech and Sounds

"The end is coming for Saddam. Right now. He knows it, his torturers know it. In the words of a new song?to be released in April?by Iraq's most famous singer, Kazim Al Sahir (his name has many spellings; he's also called Kadim Al Saher), "The War Is Over."

Still, if the war to come does indeed end by April, the divided nature of Iraq?and of its music?will not end. Indeed, the division may widen, as Iraq's Arabic majority population and its Kurdish minority each feel free to develop their already flourishing, very dissimilar cultures. The new Iraq may well look?and sound?something like today's Belgium, where the techno-heavy music of that country's Flemish-speaking regions bumps up against the Parisian Euro-pop of its francophone southern half. If so, those of us who want to know well the new, hopefully democratic Iraq dare not overlook the music of Kurdistan."

The Village Voice: Music: After Saddam, The Music by Michael Freedberg

quoted:
===
The game you are about to play is a test of the next generation of Twenty Questions.

This works surprisingly well. The algorithm is very straight forward...

20Q - Play 20 Questions Against an AI

] I'm calling in from the highly-guarded border of Iran and
] Kurdistan. A truck is waiting for us to transport CNN
] staff, our personal belongings, and our television gear
] into kurd-controlled northern Iraq. We're crossing into
] this region to cover the northern front of a potential
] war with Iraq, in an area dense with oil-rich fields
] along the northern no-fly-zone.

Kevin Sites Blog

] In any case, we shall continue our work at the
] waitingforthewebcaminiraq so that you could organize the
] projections at the walls and screens of your towns. Also,
] journalist Antonio Baquero is going to try to send us a
] usual everyday photo from a Baghdadi street that we would
] like to film.

Baghdad Webcam update. Evidently technical and licensing problems are preventing the installation of the webcams themselves so far, though there is a journalist who is sending out daily photos which are being posted on this site at http://www.webcaminiraq.org.

There also seems to be information and pics at the following domain:
http://www.waitingforthewebcaminiraq.org

And an explanation of some of the difficulties in obtaining a "webcam license" from the Baghdad authorities, who are evidently indicating some suspicion about the use of the webcam, here:
http://www.webcaminiraq.org/estado_english.htm

The WebCamInIraq site seems to be posted by Spanish journalists, with text in either Spanish or (moderately understandable) English. At least it's a daily pic update though!

Thanks to Mr. Kobeissi of Asharq Al-Awsat for the info and links!

Webcam in Iraq Project

] Blogs are novelists' notebooks (too)
] Today in Gibson's blog, a rumination on what it feels
] like to be a novelist between novels:

Gibson:
] LIKE A MAGPIE WITHOUT A NEST
]
] That's how Rudy Rucker, in an email yesterday, described
] how it feels to be a novelist between books. No place to
] take the shiny things we constantly find. He's treating
] his own condition, he said, by writing a horror sorry
] about having belonged to a country club in Lynchburg,
] Virginia, in the early Eighties (man, that *is* scary).
]
] No place for the magpie mind to take the trinkets and
] bits of tinfoil, currently. If I bring them here, for
] instance, I'm just leaving them on your window-ledge,
] something no magpie would ever be satisfied with doing.

Doctorow:
] I've been using this blog to keep track of stuff that
] needs to work its way into my novels for years now.
] Rucker's blog is nothing but notes on his books. Sterling
] says you can extrapolate his next book from this links on
] his blog. I betcha that's true of Warren Ellis, too.
] Blogs are the new novelist's commonplace book. I've been
] saying this for a while, but I thought I might be the
] only one.

Links contained within..

Boing Boing: Blogs and novelists

] While I'm on the topic of mediated personae, something
] that came up during that CBC taping, last night (for me,
] anyway) was the idea that blogging (or even posting to
] fora) represents the democratization of the mediated
] persona. Literally anyone can have one, now, or several.
] I am an exception to this, because I have mine via the
] printed word, the oldest mass medium on the planet, and
] this website is maintained by a publishing company that
] belongs to an even larger corporation owned in turn by
] shapeshifting reptiles from Beta Reticuli, but the rest
] of you, today, are free to mass-mediate your own
] personae. Which was formerly, hugely, not the case.
] Choose a handle, post: you're mediating a persona.

William Gibson - SOMEONE WONDERS... - Media perception and blogs