Richard links to an essay by Niall Ferguson about what exactly "Power" is and how the United States can (and will) use it (or lose it.)#

One of the proposed measures of power is simply people. Everything that matters to people starts and ends with people, so it seems like a natural measurement.

Population counts: Once again, you only need to ask the French, whose decline and fall as a great power was linked to their relatively low birthrate in the nineteenth century. (In the eighteenth century, they had outnumbered all the other European powers bar Russia.) It's also worth noting that average population growth rates in the Islamic world have been running at nearly double the Chinese rate. If we are, as Samuel Huntington has claimed, witnessing a clash of civilizations, it must matter that their civilization is quite literally growing faster than ours. It is also a much more youthful civilization than that of the senescent West.

But of course, resources are necessary as well, so the situation is much more complex than it seems. Surprise.

But even people + resources, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product can't really be consider power either:

But GDP doesn't stand for Great Diplomatic Power. If the institutions aren't in place to translate economic output into military hardware—and if the economy grows faster than public interest in foreign affairs—then product is nothing more than potential power. America overtook Britain in terms of GDP in the 1870s, but it was not until the First World War that it overtook Britain as a global power.

His discussion of financial power is brilliant:

Sub-Marxist teenage demonstrators from Seattle to Prague like to claim that power in fact lies with international financial institutions. This really is as silly as it gets. The two banks like to criticize one another, but both the IMF and the World Bank have one thing in common: They are trying to help less-developed or transitional economies. Their medicine may not always be palatable or effective, but that's another matter. If these institutions have a problem, it is that they are not powerful enough, not that they are too powerful. Much of the time all they can do is lend money to flaky governments and exhort them to be less flaky. Some power. Their resources are also far more limited than the antiglobalization rent-a-mob seems to realize. What the IMF calls its "total resources" amount to approximately $290 billion, but its net lending capacity is just $88 billion. That's less than a quarter of the U.S. Social Security budget.

Although, I find it curious that he would not refer to the great power that the Rothschild family exerted in the 18th and 19th century, which he documented in his biography of said family. Perhaps it just goes without saying that there does not currently exist such a powerful financial institute?

Moving on to Multinational Corporations:

But the real point, some would claim, is that so many of these multi-national corporations are American. And the products they sell are the key to the real power the United States wields—its "soft" power, the things that make the United States attractive.

The trouble with soft power is that it's, well, soft. All over the Islamic world there are kids who enjoy (or would like to enjoy) bottles of Coke, Big Macs, CDs by Britney Spears, and DVDs starring Tom Cruise. Do any of these things make them love America more? Strangely not.

He then denounces the idea that information enabled individuals can produce non-government organizations with great power by pointing to the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

But the WWF's current campaign to stop overfishing of the world's oceans is likely to be frustrated by the countless millions of—you guessed it—individual consumers who just like eating fish more than they like thinking about the future of the planet. The biggest check on the power of those who actively surf may be the indifference of those who passively shop.

The clincher:

There is no reason in theory why democracies should not prove equally resilient, even though they rely on consent through representation rather than (or at least more than) on coercion. But we don't know for sure. No democracy has ever suffered privations as colossal as those the Nazis inflicted on the Soviets; the United States in particular has got off amazingly lightly in all the wars it has fought against external enemies.

Power, then, is partly about material things: guns, butter, men, money, oil. But it is also about morale. In a world characterized by the diffusion of most of the material elements of power, real power may therefore come to depend on having credibility and legitimacy. Faith cannot move mountains. But it can move men.

This essay, The Medieval European Knight vs. The Feudal Japanese Samurai, by J. Clements, is very an intriguing and detailed look at the two cultures and styles of war.#

The primary purpose of the first few sections is to emphasis the difference between the two groups. A particularly interesting distinction:

We might also want to consider the forms of warfare each swordsman was experienced in and focused upon. The early samurai engaged in a ritualized style of warfare where individual champions might fight separate battlefield duels following established protocols, as opposed to a later mounted archery style of combat amidst pike formations of lesser foot soldiers. Their clan warfare was decidedly feudalistic yet with acquiring and honor and renown also being a goal. Skirmishing was not also uncommon and there were a few large scale military expeditions to Korea and surrounding islands. But most combat occurred in the environment of the home islands.

Whereas in contrast, knights emphasized mounted shock warfare with couched lances, and off the field a concern for chivalric and judicial duels as well as tournaments of all kinds. The Western way of war for knights was directed more at a traditional battle of annihilation as part of an overall campaign of conquest. Yet, individual challenges, whether to the death or not, were frequent.

And another note of interest:

It could be argued that the samurai by nature could have a tactical advantage in attitude and fortitude as a result of the psychological elements of his training and fighting methods. He is well- known to have integrated unarmed techniques into his repertoire as well as having a keen sense of an opponent's strengths and weaknesses. Still, much of this is intangible and subjective. Besides, although not widely appreciated, it is now well-documented (particularly from Medieval Italian and German fighting manuals) that European knights and men-at-arms fully integrated advanced grappling, wrestling, and disarming techniques into their fighting skills. They also studied considerably on tactics and the military "sciences." There is no evidence to the myth that knightly martial culture was any less sophisticated or highly develop than its Asian counterparts —its traditions and methods only fell out of use with the social and technological changes brought about by advances in firearms and cannon.

It's interesting how much emphasis is placed on the lack of information about what European martial arts were like. Apparently they were hardly preserved at all. As a result, there is a great deal of confusion about it's effectiveness and the minute details. The author blames historical-fantasy role players and movies the most for the misunderstandings.

As the article begins to close the discussion removes a great deal of vagueness and exhibits more humour:

Considering the many issues brought out in describing the modern reconstruction of historical European martial arts, contrasting them with the practice of Asian fighting arts is a legitimate area of speculation. If we had a time machine and for depraved research wanted to go back, grab a hundred random Medieval knights and an equal number of samurai, match them one on one and throw them at each other, we might be able to come up some statistical averages (and some serious ethical problems, as well). In one sense we are talking about very different approaches to armed personal defense in this comparison. But, then again it's all the same when reduced to two armed combatants facing one another in antagonistic combat. There are many universal commonalities and shared fundamentals between both European and Japanese feudal warriors, but there were also significant technical and stylistic differences in their respective approaches. If not, their martial histories and their arms and armors would not have been so distinct.

Christopher Lydon interviewed with Tim Berners-Lee last week.#

The interview is very interesting, and Chris' teaser gives a great peek at how it goes:

The Web is not, first, what Tim Berners-Lee thought he was designing in the early '90s: a collaborative medium for researchers working together at a distance. That part, for a variety of technical and legal reasons, just didn't work. Neither is the Web a superhighway of anything, if the highway motif makes you think of concrete, steel, and fixed routes to anywhere. The Web is not, and must never be, the avenue of a monoculture. It is not the outline of a universal brain that will reduce human beings to mere neurons in a Global Mind. It is not a monument to the "Me Decade." That is, it's not all about expressive blogging. Or rather: it's equally about listening and learning. It is about them as much as it's about us. It is not, he insists, a structure. It is not an active agent--even as it kicks into the cultural and political life of the United States in the presidential decision year of 2004.

I find it interesting how very hands-off Tim Berners-Lee is and intent on making sure no one will compare him to Al Gore or someone interested in turning a medium into a power structure.

When Chris asks about how the Web is changing politics and interactions between people, Tim says:

Let's not say the Web is changing these things. Society is doing it. People are changing the world, and they may be using the Web to do it. We shouldn't "tune" the Web for a particular structure.

Which leads to a discussion about what the Web was originally to do as TBL at first conceived it:

The idea was that hypertext would be a way of working together where a trace would be created that others could follow.

One that he seems to be very interested in is using the Web in a true read/write way--being able to annotate any resource you come across.

Talkback is a poor man's annotation system. We want a more comprehensive system in the future.

[...]

Love to see people use the web to hold people accountable... like adding annotations.

I think this is a fantastic vision as well. But there are some problems with it as it has been implemented so far: You can't directly annotate, independent of another person.

It seems to me there are 4 strategies for annotation today:

1. Not allowing people to annotate your work. (The dominate way, like #2 but you never link anything.)
2. Personally screening annotations and then providing links to then. (When I write about your page and then email you about it. And if you don't link me, there's always Technorati.)
3. TrackBack
4. Comments. (Problems: You can delete comments and they dilute the annotator's internet presence.)

The problem with TrackBack and Comments that personal screening solves is that of spam. How do you know where it's really a quality annotation?

I think that the goal of Annotea is to solve this problem and have reputations of annotators and annotation servers. Now, if only more web browsers would turn into web clients, like Amaya.

An interesting comment that he makes is about the potential for information overload that the Web exposes us to:

Some people wonder that if because the web allows them to read anything, does that they should read everything?

And then ties this to the vision of a grand participatory democracy:

We can't completely participate, but we can shift the balance between delegation and participation.

Basically, because we have to have real lives we can't all sit around being participants in a democracy all the time. At some point you need to delegate.

Richard MacManus writes about this interview as well.#

When Lydon asked him why he created the Web back in the late 80's/early 90's, Berners-Lee said he felt there was "a need to write where you can read". He initially designed it to be a "collaborative medium", but it's real impact has been as a "publication medium". A word he used a few times was "annotate" and one point in particular stood out here: that we should be able to annotate the Web in order to "make people accountable". TBL used the example of US politics, which he felt needed to improve its accountability. He suggested that the Web could enable the public to annotate what public figures say and evolve discussions around that. This reminded me of the W3C's read/write web browser, Amaya, which I've blogged about in the past. Amaya is one of the great missed opportunities of the Web, IMHO. Microsoft's Internet Explorer has roughly 95% of the market, yet it can only read Web content - it can't be used towrite it.

And:

My favourite part of the TBL interview was when he said that blogging *should* be two-way. One should express oneself (=WRITE), but also listen to feedback (=READ). Berners-Lee thought that blogging has done exceedingly well to provide mechanisms for gathering and listening to feedback. But he wants people on the Web in general (and I'm hereby employing this concept to blogging specifically) to make a conscious effort to not constrain themselves to a rose-coloured view of the world. That is, don't become trapped in a self-reinforcing social group, that only links to and reads content belonging to other members of your group. Listen to other bloggers, listen to *all* the blogosphere.

William Blaze writes about anti-Statists and other extremist ideas.#

Perhaps the same brain centers that produce belief in the supernatural are at work, those that have killed god seek to fill the void with another amorphous entity. The left traditionally looks to capitalism as jealous and vengeful god, while the right prefers the kind "invisible hand" god driven by "free" markets.

[...]

I've got no use for this bullshit. We live and world filled both with great beauty and substantive problems. And those problems are ones that we can do a lot towards solving. But in order to begin solving these issues its important to set aside many of tropes that have left the left stagnating in their own outdated concepts. Its time to move beyond the notions of "resistance", "revolution" and the excessive reliance on "critical" theory. There is no known war for the left to fight, no proven "system" to revolt against. There is a time and space for the critical, but there also need for the constructive and positive, both in reality and theory.

Mark Schmitt writes about the election fundamentally changes after New Years, as people start paying attention.#

I think Jeff Jarvis's analysis, which is basically that the voters coming into the game now are not as motivated by hatred of Bush, but want a more substantive message, is basically right. (Which is not to say they don't hate Bush or that the Democrat should hold back on criticizing Bush -- it's just that their feelings about Bush are not strong enough by themselves to motivate them out of their La-z-boys the year before the election.)

I think there's a little more to Dean's apparent decline than just that. Dean set himself a huge challenge, which I don't think he and Joe Trippi really understood. Having a candidacy based on intense enthusiasm requires keeping that enthusiasm going, against all other temptations and distractions, for a long time, from last summer through at least January 27. That was always going to be hard to do, and as enthusiasm wanes, the little tactics like "bringing out the bat" lose their effectiveness. This was a bubble, in the classic sense. It was like one of those NASDAQ companies in the late 1990s whose stock price was driven by its stock price. . As long as you could keep it going, and bring in new buyers for the stock, it works, but the minute the new buyers fall away, it evaporates very quickly. It's not just that Dean was subject to a lot of attacks, but that he actually didn't have enough substance -- both policy and larger vision of the country's future -- to his candidacy. He was a pre-New Year's candidate.

Brian Micklethwait writes about Glenn Reynolds and diplomacy.#

Instapundit is pleased because this report says what he and lots of others have also said, that it was American military muscle and the threat of more of it, not merely polite requests to Col Gadaffi to be nicer from Blair or his fellow Europeans. Quite so. The idea that recent American military activity had nothing to do with Gaddafi's change of heart is very far fetched.

But what irritates me is that Blair, the Telegraph, Instapundit, the lot of them, are all talking about "threats" and "diplomacy" as if these were two entirely different and opposite things, when in truth threats and diplomacy go hand in hand, and neither can work properly without the other.

Charley Reese on the threat of terrorism and what it means.#

It pleases George Bush to call Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations, but they are not, as far as the United States is concerned. Their target is Israel. The Israelis are right to call them terrorists, but we, as a sovereign country, should never go about adopting other people's enemies as our own. Neither Hamas nor Islamic Jihad has ever attacked the United States or expressed any desire to do so. And the same is true of most so-called terrorists in most parts of the world.

Our problem is with bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization. We should have concentrated on that instead of declaring a global jihad against terrorists everywhere in the world.

The problem with doing this is that it commits us to an unending war. It is a war in which there is no way to define victory. When you go to war against a country, when you occupy it and its government surrenders or collapses, you know you have won the war. But terrorists don't have a country. They don't have a government. They don't have an infrastructure.

Marcus Verhaegh describes the debate amongst libertarians about wars for "liberation" and war in general.#

In short, while there may be a place for governmental "wars of liberation" within libertarianism (whether these be specifically anti-slavery or not), there seems much more legitimacy to the idea of private agents using coercion to end rights-violations. A major problem: such private actions raise many difficult questions, such as how responsibility is to be traced, and credible threats offered, when private agents wrongly use violence merely in the name of "liberation."

Thus it seems fair to say that libertarian thought should, in a world dominated by modern states, support respect for autonomous self-development of peoples, such that they come, on their own, to stamp out slavery or other rights-violations. Any other approach is simply too destructive, engendering far more violations of rights than it ends. By the same token, libertarian thought (in its classical liberal, "minarchist" vein) should support a defense policy that is squarely focused on protecting the property of taxed citizens, thereby disdaining the rhetoric of "wars of liberation."

Tyler Cowen on the drug-related crime as a result of marijuana and crack cocaine use.#

1. Cocaine supply, which requires processing in Colombia labs, is more centralized in nature. Centralization leads to monopoly profits and thus a greater incentive for violence to protect territory. There will be mobs and mafias at the top of the supply chain. They will feel threatened if anyone invades their turf, and the tendencies for violence work their way down to the retail level.

2. Marijuana is closer to a constant cost supply drug. You can always grow some in your backyard. The power of mobs is limited correspondingly and the incentive to invest in marketing and addicting your customers is weaker.

Adam Keys on software:#

Today, my belief is that software development, like life, is an art of taking risks. Of course you can't make much forward progress without taking risk. The trick is to choose them such that they are just risky enough that you can deal with the ramifications of backing out your decisions without too much pain.

AKMA describes Tom Wright's take on postmodernism.#

When we get to the "consequences of postmodernism in biblical studies" section of Wright's article, I begin to part ways with him. He ascribes a series of developments to the malign influence of postmodernism; I see the same developments as much more congruent with modernity in biblical studies, perhaps drawing strength from a rhetoric of postmodernity, but not from any coherent appropriation of postmodern thought. The notion that the Bible didn't constitute a unified "big story" was well-established before anyone in biblical studies heard the word "postmodern." Rudolf Bultmann famously argued that the New Testament constituted the fulfillment of the Old Testament only in the sense that the promises of the Old Testament failed, where the New Testament brought a truly authentic understanding of existence. The allegedly-postmodern advocacy of Paul's adversaries and Deuteronomy's victims derives much of its material from modern source-critical scholarship; about the only difference between modern and "postmodern" critics in this respect is that the pomos are willing to entertain the possibility that Paul's and Deuteronomy's opposite numbers were not cartoon villains with black hats and handlebar moustaches, but diligent, thoughtful interpreters of the tradition they inherited.

Alex Halavais describes how he's not particularly worried about his blog coming back to "bite" him.#

I would hate to think what someone would find if they googled me without my blog. At the very least, it provides me a right-of-reply for those who would intentionally or inadvertently put a less than favorable spin on my life. Indeed, I consider the blog in some ways to be an organ of public relations, a way of managing my personal identity.

I also use it as a way to communicate with my future self. I am candid and try to be extremely honest, both of which I believe to be less harmful to my future than some may think. If something in this record offends a future potential employer or friend, then they are offended by my past, and I am unlikely to want to have a continued relationship.

My name is Jay McCarthy, and I approve of this message.

Rosemary Esmay on Jay Bryant's take on racism in the Democratic party.#

Carol Mosley Braun is his first example. She is always described as the first African-American woman in the Senate. This is totally accurate. Of course, it would also be accurate to say that she was the first African-American Democrat in the Senate. Nobody ever says that but it's true. The Republicans, not doing much better, have had three African-Americans in the Senate; Hiram Revels, Blanche Kelso Bruce and Edward Brooke. Of course, the majority of African-Americans are Democrats. I think the Democrats are failing to uphold the standards of affirmative action that they require everyone else to live by. They should lead by example. If they applied affirmative action to their own party, and since about a 1/3 of all Democrats are African-American, the Senate Democrats need 12 African-American Senators. They have zero.

Caterina writes about the Lord of the Rings movies seem like they're about to end at many points. I agree with this.#

John D. Mitchell links to Mr. Ed on non-falsifiable propositions in software development.#

You may find that it is not possible to get your opponent to formulate a specific proposition. They may simply refuse to commit to any specific claim at all. This reaction is common amongst charlatans and con men. They only speak in abstract and inscrutable terms (sometimes of their own invention), always keeping their claims vague enough to deny disproof. They discourage scrutiny of their claims, preferring to cast their vagueness as being mysterious and evidence of some deep, unspoken wisdom. If they cannot provide you with a direct answer to the question "What would it take to prove you wrong?" then you know you are dealing with a non-falsifiable proposition, and your best option may simply be to walk away.

Nova Spivack on how to improve the iPod.#

- There should be a way to easily save the "Recently played" smartlist (or in fact any playlist) as a new playlist with a different name that can then be easily edited.

What's Special About This Number?#

Dave Pollard writes about birds and nature.#

The Third Way is to understand nature instinctively, intuitively. Trusting your instincts makes things that are inconceivable morally or rationally, as easy for humans to conceive of, and understand, as they are to birds. Scientists have been trying rationally, scientifically, to understand how birds fly, and the staggering complexity of birds' aerodynamic apparatus since Da Vinci, and have hardly made a scratch in that understanding. Meanwhile, instinctively, birds know what they have to do to fly. It is, to them, staggeringly simple, obvious. The instinct is hard wired in them. Moralists and philosophers have been trying to construct codes of conduct and behaviour to explain and modify human behaviour since before the invention of language, and still every century we kill and damage each other in greater degrees and greater numbers, behave in successively more barbaric and less 'civilized' ways. Meanwhile all the other life species on Earth, who have neither capacity nor need for moral codes, conduct themselves in amazingly collaborative and synergistic ways that optimize the quality and quality of life of every creature on the planet -- save perhaps man. The instinct to do so, to know what to do and how to do it, is part of them. They don't have to learn it. There is nothing romantic or mystical about this. It is just listening to the simple, inherent language of evolution.

Lawrence Lessig has words for Iowans.#

Good luck to my favorites in Iowa. As I've indicated a bunch of times, I'm a split Democrat — admiring most the movement Dr. Dean has built, and the passion and power Senator Edwards has. I am reassured that more in Iowa see the latter; I am worried that we all (Democrats at least) don't forget the importance of the former.

Kevin Lawver on what he believes, as a Mormon.#

I believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about love, not hate. I believe that it is not our place to pass judgement on any of our fellow children of God. I believe that we were each given our own particular burdens to bear, and that our goal on this earth is to turn those burdens into talents - to do our best to overcome our own particular weakness and make them strengths. In realizing this, I know that I'm doing poorly enough on my own that I have neither the time nor the right to pass judgement on others in their struggle. There is no room for hate in the Gospel. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. In loving one another, I believe it is our responsibility to love them as they are, to accept them, love them and support them. We may believe the things people do are wrong, but that doesn't give us the right to proclaim their damnation, their punishment or exclude them from society.

Anil Dash on the return of Microsoft *NIX.#

The Services for Unix (SFU) are free to download and consist of an entire Unix environment installed as a native subsystem on Windows. For those of you who don't know your Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 history, the NT kernel has always supported running multiple subsystems, and NT has always shipped with a Posix-compliant command-line subsystem, largely for checklist compatibility with some now-obsolete government requirements. Unlike tools like Cygwin, which run on top of the standard Windows shell, SFU implements the Interix subsystem as a true peer to the Windows shell.

Michael Feldman wants more from his aggregator.#

The Dowbrigade loves his aggregator. It is his constant companion, his window on not only the Blogosphere, but on much of what goes on in the world outside of his immediate presence.

But we lust for more. Separate bins for our varied moods and tastes in news, adjustable content filters to control how much of each post comes through, flagged imperishability, one-click subscription to feeds linked through the feeds you are already subscribed to, elegant implementation of enclosures, etc.

Matt May writes about responsibility.#

Which brings me to my biggest beef. What is it about America that everybody blames someone else for their actions, and flatly refuses to take responsibility for themselves? This woman not only knew that she had done damage to my car (and presumably that I don't have comp and collision, because, well, it's a 20-year-old Volvo), and instead of leaving contact information, instead of even a simple "I'm sorry, but you were parked too close", I get insult and injury.

Stirling Newberry writes about Howard Dean and the Internet Campaign.#

You see, if the New Politics had failed, we would see Dean melting down in the rest of the country. We don't. We would see the press turning on him even harder. We don't. They've learned how Dean's organization turns people out - to the Wisconsin straw poll for example, and to Washington DC. They've seen him knock the cover off the ball enough times to know that his people do what they are supposed to do.

But they also know from the ground a simple problem, one that is raising a deep question mark: Dean is perceived as "shooting from the lip" as they say in Washington DC. That does not play well in Iowa, or in many other plains and upper Mississippi states.

Richard links to Alanna Mitchell in the The Globe and Mail on the lack of male teachers.#

He points to one of his own classes: Of 65 students, about seven are male. "Most of the young women in this class are talented, capable, caring. They like children. Many don't even know what teachers get paid."

In some ways, that's positive, he said, because these women are going into the profession for the love of it, not for money or prestige. And the men? Maybe the men, just like the Fisherville kids said, are going into jobs where they get paid more and don't have to work so hard.

Richard ponders how to increase hits.#

To be honest, I wondered what effect putting photos of pretty girls would have on my hitcount. It would probably do wonders. At least more than having just pretty prose, which has what I've been trying—no word yet on the sucess rate—to do pretty much since this weblog's inception.

Pretty girls. Or pretty prose. Or both. Another dilemma.

A feed I subscribe to seems to randomly insert pictures of models into the entries, so you see them in your aggregator but not when you goto the page. It's an interesting method.

James Robertson points to Gordon Weakliem and his plan for his daughter.#

The other day, I was telling Peter Provost about my grand plan for coping with being the father of a teenage daughter. Basically, it involves making her so geeky that she won't even think about boys until she's 25. I started the indoctrination early.

One problem with this plan is that it's quite possible that coding will be a pretty well accepted activity for teenagers. It may be that boys 13 years from now will see a girl with righteous hacking credentials as more attractive. My solution to this is to de-emphasize a C language background. I wouldn't want to find her hacking on the Linux 10.0 kernel.

Joi Ito provides an interesting look at what spam would be like in real life.#

Comment spam is becoming more "sophisticated". Originally, my policy was to erase stuff that linked to commercial sites if they didn't add to the dialog in the comments. Now comment spammers are actually trying to contribute to the discussion, but still leaving links to their commercial sites. It is much harder to identify as spam. Only by looking at the site that is linked do you realize that it's probably spam.

This is sort of the social equivalent to hanging out at someone's party and handing out flyers for penis enlargers at the end of the party.

The Binary Circumstance links to Trey Givens on why the War on Terror is COOL.#

Suddenly, "infidel" is funnier than "hooker."

Watching little kids pound on Saddam's head with their shoe. Ok. It was just his statue, but it was still good fun.

It's easier to identify which pedestrians actually do deserve to be run down because the libs are wearing Kucinich tin caps, Rowdy Dean Rolled-up Sleeves, or buttons that say, "OOOOOOO... I hate Bush so much right now. I hate him so much that I paid $16,000 for this button."

Funny Bumper Stickers about Bin Laden that say "Buck Fin Laden." Ha ha!

The Binary Circumstance points to Andrew Sullivan's criticism of Bush.#

Sullivan is a religious conservative himself who has strongly supported Bush, and I suspect that that support will continue despite his frustrations over the current administrations spending.

What I really find amazing is that there are so many who call themselves Objectivists who support Bush. The simple fact is that Bush is a mystic who spends money stolen from the public (the future public that is) like there is no tomorrow. On the political, rational, economic spectrum he is as antithetical to Objectivist values as you can get. Somebody tell me. Why?

The Binary Circumstance is sooo funny.#

I caught a shot of Howard Dean on some TV news story about the Iowa Caucus. It happened really fast but his lips puckered while he was working some crowd and his tongue which looked like it was rolled up into a tube stuck out of his mouth real fast like a lizard. It was sooooooooo creepy. Now that he's dropping some in the polls, I'm wondering if the people in Iowa have been noticing that. If I had been for him, I would certainly have changed my mind real fast. Can you imagine him at a press conference or meeting with international leaders and having his tongue snap out like that? You'd think being a doctor and everything, maybe there would be a medication he could take for lizard-tongue syndrome but I guess not. Or maybe nobody has told him. What if he surrounds himself with people who are afraid to tell him the truth about himself. That would just be too much like the Burning Bush.

Vote for the 2004 Bloggies.#

Kaye Trammell on the dangers of blogging...#

I don't have any direct ties to the high school crowd these days, but my friend is an uncle of a 17-year-old boy blogger. Over the winter break, my friend called me all-a-flutter because boy blogger had written some "concerning things" on his blog. Apparently, the kid didn't know that his parents read his blog. Well, they did & now they knew his innermost thoughts & teenage desires. Not to mention that they knew he didn't send in half his college apps like he had said he did. Opps.

That is a case of the blog biting you in the short term. But there are greater dangers in the long term.