Posts

Rex Hammock has posted a first hand account of his meeting with President Bush to his weblog.

Returning to work seems to have re-lit the fires of technical curiosity under me. Today I’m installing Subversion on my Linux server, and upgrading from Apache 1.3.27 to Apache 2.0.48. I’m also looking at moving Feed on Feeds to my web host so that I can make a blogroll of sorts out of the feeds I’m subscribed to. That’s another nice advantage of a server-based aggregator. Update: if you’re going to fiddle with Subversion, you need a link to the Subversion book. ...

Robert Fisk on democracy in Iraq. Fisk addresses one of the things his critics often accuse him of – bigotry against Arabs: The moment we suggest that Iraq never was fertile soil for Western democracy, we get accused of being racists. Do we think the Arabs are incapable of producing democracy, we are asked? Do we think they are subhuman? He goes on to answer it here: Now there are a lot of Arabs who would like a bit of this precious substance called democracy. Indeed, when they emigrate to the West and settle down with US or British or French or any other Western passport, they show the same aptitude as ourselves for "democracy". The Iraqis of Dearborn, Michigan, are like any other Americans, and they vote - largely Democrat - and play and work like any other freedom-loving US citizens. So there's nothing genetic about the Arab world's inability to seize democracy. The problem is not the people. The problem is the environment, the make-up of the patriarchal society and - most important of all - the artificial states which we created for them. They do not and cannot produce democracy. The dictators we paid and armed and stroked ruled by torture and by tribe. Faced with nations which they in many cases did not believe in, the Arab peoples had confidence only in their tribes. He continues further, but you get the point. ...

Don’t read James Webb’s USA Today op-ed without reading Billmon’s follow up. Billmon does a great job of explaining Webb’s background and addressing the somewhat self-contradictory nature of the op-ed.

In every single Presidential election in recent times, much talk has centered around special interests, specifically accusations among the candidates that they have sold out to special interests. Frankly, I think it’s time for us to be adults about this issue and get used to the fact that every single candidate is sold out to special interests, and that we should vote for the candidates that are sold out to the special interests that offend us least. I think we can safely include in the list of special interests industrial associations, corporations, large donors, political action groups, religious groups, unions, and pretty much any other type of group that includes as part of its objectives the achievement of a political goal. Which politician isn’t associated with any such groups? I think it’s easier to stay sane if you judge politicians by the policies that they support rather than by trying to figure out whose donations cause them to support those policies. If you think that drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve is a bad idea, does it matter whether President Bush wants to drill there because he takes tons of money from oil companies or whether he really does think that we need more domestic oil production? The end result is the same. By the same token, I don’t care whether Democrats think extending the term of copyrights is a good idea because they’re awash in campaign money from the entertainment industry or because they want to help support artists – it’s a stupid idea regardless. Speculating on motives is inevitable, but it’s certainly not reliable, and accusations of corruption are easy to deny. Focus on actions and their results, which are much less open to dispute. I bring this up for two reasons. The first is that I hear that the Bush campaign is going to attack John Kerry for being “brought to us” by special interests. At the same time, I heard a college student interviewed yesterday say that he was supporting John Edwards over Kerry because Edwards seemed less sold out to special interests than Kerry is. This is pointless politics. ...

The Economist ran an article this week about the current job picture in America, stating in essence that outsourcing of jobs to cheaper labor markets has been part of the global economy for centuries and isn’t going away, and that not many jobs are lost to it anyway. As a fan of free trade, I’m very sympathetic to this line of argument, even though the idea of job opportunities in my industry scares me at a visceral level. Indeed, I find my enthusiasm for John Edwards seeping away as he continually scapegoats free trade on the campaign trail these days. Unfortunately, the Economist’s writer betrays a lack of understanding of the IT industry when he tosses out sentences like this: ...

Malcolm Gladwell: Big and Bad. Gladwell’s article talks about the difference between feeling safe and being safe, and how that has led Americans to swarm to large SUVs. Full disclosure: I drive a Jeep Cherokee (not Grand). On the other hand, that’s an improvement – all of my previous vehicles were Ford F-series pickup trucks. I have also learned the valuable lesson (mentioned in the article) that four wheel drive doesn’t do anything at all to help you stop on icy roads the hard way, but at least no one was injured in the process. I’ll also say that in many ways the Jeep Cherokee is not like the modern SUV of today. It comes in at a svelte 3100 pounds, and is actually a couple of inches shorter bumper to bumper than a Toyota Corolla. It’s still not the ideal vehicle for many reasons (it’s a 1999 model with mid-eighties technology and gets crappy gas mileage), but it is paid off. ...

David Weinberger has a good piece at Salon today talking about the myth of the Internet as an incubator for “echo chambers.”

Eric Allman has some common sense on spam. Right now I bear the costs of filtering spam, but at least it’s working pretty well for me.

My favorite roleplaying game ever, Paranoia, is being revived with a new edition this fall.