Probably an apt description of blogging. :) BTW, User Friendly is an excellent Web comic.

I’ve never quite understood a particular behavior when I’m working with outside vendors: Silence. Particularly when a project is nearing deadline. I want to hear the good news, the bad news, and the no news. I want to hear solid facts, informed commentary, wild guesses, and off-the-wall opinions (although it helps if those are labeled as such). I want to hear everything, even at the risk of being flooded by information, because I can’t walk over and stand in the vendor’s cube to find out what’s going on like I can with people in my building. ...

While I heard the arguments that the Iraq war caused Libya’s leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to renounce terrorism, I’m really hoping not that many people bought it. Do old dictators reform that easily? Has assassination fallen by the wayside as a means of continuing policy (or just grudges)? Sounds like it’s alive and well… ( NY Times link, registration required) Anyway, I seem to remember not too long ago we were once again debating the efficacy of assassination as a tool of our own foreign policy. ...

I know, it’s really soon after his death, but the Bush/Zombie Reagan ticket is hard to pass up. Link courtesy of Boing Boing.

One brief moment of paralysis, right after you open a blog, seems to be “What’s important enough to be the first post? What momentous thing is going on in the world?” Well, there are a lot of momentous things happening, but I have to say the one article I’ve read lately that absolutely fascinated me is this one, about Josef Stalin’s movie habits. Any article that mentions Stalin, Scorsese, and Eszterhas in the same sentence has to be worth reading. That, and Khrushchev talking to John Wayne about an assassination attempt. ...

I have questions about this site, so it seems likely anyone who wandered past would have some as well. So, here’s an (i)FAQ for The Phantom City. Q. What is this place? A. It is a place beyond time and space, beyond your most terrifying…never mind, it’s just a blog. My personal > public journal, to be exact. Q. Why should I be interested in it? What’s your hook? A. Nothing in particular. It’s mostly for my edification. But try reading it. You might find something in which you didn’t realize you’d be interested. I’m doing that all the time (300+ feeds on Feedly and counting). ...