Without having seen his flick, reading Gibson’s quotes indicates he’s an angry, sick dude on some weird guilt-trip. How can anyone take him seriously?

The campaign manager for one of the congressional campaigns came back last week to renew some blogads. Afterwards he sent this note:

“Your purchasing engine is extremely easy to use for both the initial purchase and ad updates. I think this is a wonderful system.

Roman Levit
Campaign Manager
Barrow for Congress“

Thomas Friedman visits a company in India that handles work sent from the US. Aren’t you stealing jobs from the US, he asks an an Indian manager?

Well, he answered patiently, “look around this office.” All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Mr. Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.

(Via Outside the beltway.)

A profile of Atrios. You can get a great advertising deal & help buy Atrios’ next martini or three here.

In todays WSJ, Mylene Mangalindan takes a detailed look at the resurgence of online advertising, focusing on Mitsubishi, which has done a number of ad campaigns online and is boosting its online spend 50% in 2004 to $6 million. The company “increased spending after each successful Internet campaign by slicing money out of its billboard and print publication budgets.” Now, Mitsubishi’s online ads have cut the company’s “cost per sale — the amount of money spent on advertising divided by the number of cars sold — to one third of the cost of traditional advertising media.”

For you skimmers here’s the point: ONE THIRD. The economics of traditional publishing are disintegrating fast.

Andrew Sullivan needles conservative Protestants for their hypocrisy.

WSJ columnist Lee Gomes: “blogs are becoming an alternative-news universe, giving everyone with a PC and a Web connection access to the sorts of gossip that was once available only to reporters on the press bus… I am, in my private life, a voracious reader of these things, as are most of my friends, reporters included.” (Via Political Wire.)

Looks like our order form is screwy. We’ve been reinforcing the counting mechanisms, which seems to have thrown off the catalog of blogs. Two steps forward, one step back. We’re doing a veritable jig these days. Should be fixed Monday morning.

As safe outlets for Serpico‘s whistleblowing evaporate, his buddy Bob Blair says, “we could even talk to a guy I know at the New York Times.” Today, Serpico would undoubtedly turn to a blogger as his advocate of last resort. (I’d love to see more alternate histories woven with blogs.)

Last night watched a talent show rehearsal. We spent the afternoon playing basketball outside, girls against boys.

This morning, I enjoyed my buddy Steve’s latest post about crafting a table. This is part nine!