Posts

Billmon has a good post today about the rise of authoritarianism as a political movement in America. Worth thinking about anyway.

I had a crazy day today – first day at the new job and no computer access at all. Regular updates will hopefully resume tomorrow, or even later tonight.

The other day I talked about switching to a server side aggregator. I wound up trying Feed on Feeds, and I’ve been satisfied enough that I haven’t used anything else since. A reader suggested BlogLines to me, but I haven’t tried it yet. Unlike Feed On Feeds, which you have to install on your own server, BlogLines is a hosted service. Sam Ruby has found it good enough to switch to. The advantages of not having your RSS reading tied to a particular computer are compelling. ...

Newsweek demonstrates its usefulness by running a long piece this week on the military service of both John Kerry and President Bush, and how the Vietnam Wars affected their lives. In it we learn that Bush detested hippies and war protesters, but his feelings about actually going to fight in Vietnam don’t seem that far separated from theirs.

Worth reading: Phil Carter’s op-ed (PDF) on Bush’s National Guard service. The only thing Carter doesn’t discuss that I wish he did is Bush’s avoidance of service in Vietnam in light of his professed support of the war there.

Looks like Cingular is going to be buying AT&T Wireless after all. Maybe my GPRS service really will work someday.

SecurityTracker.com reports that an exploit based on the leaked Windows source has been created.

I hadn’t yet seen this comparative timeline of the military service of John Kerry and George W Bush.

I just now got around to reading Ahmed Rashid’s article on the current state of affairs in Afghanistan from the New York Review of Books from a couple of weeks ago. What can I say, it’s depressing.

Amazon.com’s Canadian site had a glitch (via Boing Boing) this week that displayed the names of people who had submitted anonymous book reviews. As it turns out, among anonymous reviews, many raves are posted by the authors of the actual works, and many pans are written by rivals. I’ve gotten my fair share of negative reviews on Amazon.com, but I can honestly say that I have never posted a negative review of a competing book nor have I posted a review of any of my own books. I’ve also never solicited positive reviews from friends, either. If you ask me, it’s unethical and unprofessional. Oh, and if you get outed for it, it makes you look pathetic. This also illustrates just how much weight should be given to anonymous reviews. ...