Talking the Future of War with CNN

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 22 November 2004

CNN's Paula Zahn show came by the college today in the person of correspondent Tom Foreman to interview me regarding an upcoming series on "future war." Like with the German "PBS" crew, we shot this in my office. Foreman really liked PNM and asked a lot of great questions, but I will confess that I didn't feel like I performed that well. Then again, I never feel I perform that well in such situations (the pre-taped stuff) and I guess I know why.

When it's live, the reporters tend to ask you easier questions (more specific) because everyone wants the process to go as perfectly as possible. The joy/pain of the taped interview like this one is: they will cut up the tape later and splice the best answers together for the produced segment. So I think that's why reporters like doing it this way: they can ask tougher and more broad questions, knowing they can scrub out all the bad bits and grab only the best lines (which, of course, is a lot of work for them, I would imagine). But better they work hard than me.

Anyway, despite my feeling like I sucked, Foreman was very complimentary. Of course, they always are, but I didn't feel like he was comforting me, rather that he was really psyched about interviewing me and about the series he was working on, which is really cool, because you always want to interact with people who are psyched about what they do.

Foreman's enthusiasm was needed today, since I felt a bit burned out from lack of sleep. I stayed up last night until midnight to watch the Pack beat the Texans with ANOTHER TIME-RUNNING-OUT FIELD GOAL!

Better yet, this was the first football game I have ever watched on HDTV, and it was spectacularóI mean, SPECTACULAR!

Here's today's catch:

■ Another good take on Putin's "silver bullet"

■ Iran's "Nixon" Considering Getting Kicked Around Again

■ Why America's definition of "genocide" is the only one that matters

■ "Greater China" eclipsing China as a "great power"

■ The Netherlands is joined by the Global War on Terrorism

■ The New Core is the future of environmental degradation and environmentalism

■ Japan sounds more ready to deal on North Korea

■ The "world election" needs a more globalized slate of candidates

■ The automatic first economic step in any SysAdmin job