I’ve just received my Amazon delivery of Benjamin Wittes’ Law and the Long War:The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror and Peter W. Singer’s Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. Both readings are meant to inform a broader essay I’m working on that addresses, for lack of a better term, “battlespace regulatory regimes” – the various professional, disciplinary and practical ways of managing war. I’m looking forward to digging in.

 The latest instalment from Seed Salon. Fascinating.

Noah Schachtman’s latest piece at Danger Room conveys some of the complex moral ambiguities that come with military operations in urban space. At NBOL workshops in 2007, I listened to young Israeli participants describe their experiences with similarly difficult and murky circumstances. Many of them were Master’s students who spent their 2006 summer break at war in Lebanon, and came back with heavy questions most people should never have to consider.  The scenarios they described, drawn directly from their own experiences, challenged those of us who made up the project’s “expert” panel. Go read Noah’s piece, and give it some thought.

The New Yorker reports that Soapblox, which specializes in community blogging software, was hacked early last week, dealing the company what was initially thought to be a crippling blow (grassroots support saved it from going under).

Soapblox, interestingly, is described as “a small company in Denver that administers the sites for more than a hundred liberal blogs around the country,” whose owner has “almost accidentally… come to control a critical crossroads in the netroots nation: the informal community of progressive bloggers and online activists who now play an important role in Democratic Party politics.”

Hmmm…. conspiracy? Transition this time around has been nice and smooth. When the outgoing Clintonites handed over to the incoming Bushies way back when, they were pretty puckish about things – mixing up the keys on White House keyboards, for example. This is a bit more serious, but I wouldn’t be even slightly surprised if this turned out to be a domestic crowd-sourced cyber army of virtual Republicans raising its pixelated head in one last pop at the victors.