Paul Boutin

It appears the final shutdown of Webmonkey is for real. I mourn. (*)

I got my first writing break at Webmonkey in 1997 (not counting MIT’s The Tech and a few letters to the editor at the WSJ), and was discovered there by editors from national and international print magazines. Back before the dot-com collapse and the more recent blogsplosion, Webmonkey was a unique and brilliant site. Instead of another mind-numbingly dull trade publication produced by second-rate journalists - or third-rate programmers - to sell ads aimed at IT pros, the Monkey was a first-person retelling by Hotwired tech staffers of how they built the day’s most leading-edge Web sites and services. So what if some of those projects were dumb in hindsight? It was about right place, right time.

Just as important, Webmonkey articles were flip and funny, in contrast to the “Programmer’s Corner” sleeping aids most tech pubs still grind out eight years later. All that, plus working code samples! In modern terms, it was like reading Gawker and Mark Pilgrim at the same time.

Webmonkey was Almost Famous for Web geeks - a spotlight for people who deserved it, and a backstage pass for those who wished they could be there. I’ll miss it.

(*) Yes, this is a Larry Niven reference, from “There is a Tide.” It seemed appropriately geekpop for the occasion.

Ian Fischer, in Damascus for The New York Times, finds the locals’ soft spot.

Do you like America?

“No,” said Majed Aboud, 47, leaving not an inch for doubt. “Because of Bush, they are destroying the world.”

So what about all these great cars?

“Oooohhh,” he said. “They are gorgeous.”

The photo above is from a 1963 magazine ad for my wife’s Studebaker Avanti in white with orange seats. Absolutely one of the most beautiful machines ever designed and built. It sounds great, too.

I was going to dodge politics today, but this one’s too good to pass up: The New Republic republishes a pair of letters Senator Kerry sent in January 1991 to a Massachusetts constituent who had coyly written him both in favor of and against Desert Storm.

William Saletan does the math on what’s been dubbed the Kerry Bubble. Then again, he also wrote a convincing argument in September 2000, Why Bush is Toast, that reads like deja vu:

A candidate who puts pride before prudence, refuses to learn from his mistakes, and is capable of living for days in an alternate political universe can only survive while he’s ahead. Once he falls behind, there’s no reason to think he’s up to the task of correcting his course and regaining control of the race … Bush’s little-known opponent was prone to fatally undisciplined anger and was vulnerable to ads full of previously unaired negative information. Against Gore, Bush has none of those crutches. Stick a fork in him. He’s done.