Declan McCullagh has written a background piece on Mike Hawash, the Intel engineer who’s languishing in a federal prison on a material witness warrant. By the way, did you hear about all of the prisons we’ve found in Iraq where people were being held without charges?
Man, these days I really wish I were implementing something interesting. The main reason there hasn’t been much technical discussion on this site is that I’m just not doing much interesting technical stuff these days. I’m reading an EJB book, and surprisingly, EJB seems pretty understandable to me so far, but other than that, I’m just maintaining some old applications that are really completely boring. The other problem is that I have so much going on right now just in terms of real life maintenance stuff that I don’t have a whole lot of time to really concentrate on something technical. In the meantime, I’m envying Sam Ruby, Don Box, and Russell Beattie, who are always posting about code that they’re writing. I can say that I painted all of the bathrooms in my house this weekend, which was somewhat rewarding but is nothing to write about. ...
The effect of SARS on the economy is starting to get me really worried. There’s talk of Cathay Pacific Airlines grounding its fleet next month if things don’t get better. Considering that China was responsible for 77% of global GDP growth in 2002, the idea of its economy taking a huge blow due to SARS is pretty chilling.
The New York Times ran yet another Google love letter today, talking about Google’s amazing success amidst the wreckage of so many other failed companies. The article is a typical business fawn piece (deserved in this case), I’m just linking to it because it made me realize something important. Google’s advertising system is so good that these days when I search for something involving a business transiaction, I often look at the ads that come up before looking at the search results. For someone who does everything they can to filter spam, block popups, and generally ignore advertising, that’s saying something. ...
Tom Friedman’s column today basically says what he’s been saying for weeks, which is that rebuilding Iraq and showing that Americans don’t have it in for Arabs is more important than conquering the country, and that we need to do something to help resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He unfortunately cites Colin Powell’s statement about Americans never asking for anything more than a place to bury its dead when invading other countries. It’s a beautiful sentiment, but is it true? Where did all of those military bases that we have around the world come from, anyway? It seems to me that the bases in Germany, Japan, the Philippines, Cuba, and other places as well were all direct offshoots of American invasions. How large would America be if we hadn’t taken nearly every acre of it away from Native Americans? I do not think of America as a country that’s interested in conquest, but to say that we’ve never asked for anything in terms of land from countries we’ve invaded is just inaccurate, and I hate seeing it repeated over and over, just because it reinforces the way we think of ourselves. ...
Molly Ivins wrote a nice column this week on Iraq’s new leadership. It’s amazing to me that at every opportunity, the Bush adminstration displays its tin ear.
Jake Tapper has a long story today at Salon about how we’re failing in Afghanistan. The comparisons are pretty obvious, we “liberated” Afghanistan at the end of 2002, promising big piles of foreign aid and a new, better life for Afghans. None of that has come to pass, though. It’s basically the same shooting gallery it was under the Taliban and before the Taliban. Iraq obviously has a number of advantages over Afghanistan – it sits on a bunch of oil, it’s in a strategic location, and it has a much more educated citizenry. Even so, getting it back on its feet is going to take a lot of work, and I wonder whether anyone has the tenacity to see it through. I don’t think this is a problem exclusive to the US. While in the aftermath of World War II, the victorious powers made sure that Japan and Germany were rebuilt, since then the record for turning countries around is really pretty spotty. I don’t think the US is worse than anyone else at babysitting ravaged countries until they can stand on their own two feet. I just don’t think anyone is really good at it. We have a lot of domestic problems in this country, and we have an administration that is clearly more interested in destabilizing the world rather than stabilizing it. So I don’t think that rebuilding Afghanistan or Iraq is really their agenda, and I don’t think it will hold the attention of most of our citizens. In the meantime, there are powerful people in this country who’d like to see regime change in bunches of other countries as well. Personally, I’d like to see us actually fix a country, any old country, first. ...
I often tell my wife that cognitive dissonance makes the world go round. When people encounter facts that are opposite their beliefs, they adjust their mental model to rationalize things, or simply ignore the new facts. There are plenty of Arabs and Muslims who believed that Saddam Hussein wasn’t such a bad guy, mainly because he opposed the Americans and because he was a staunch backer of the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel. Cognitive dissonance enabled (or, rather, forced) them to rationalize the fact that he horribly mistreated his own people, fellow Muslims, because he was probably the Arab leader who most strongly stood against things that they wanted to someone powerful to stand against. Last night I had the horrible misfortune of watching 15 minutes or so of Fox News while waiting for takeout. They cited a poll in which 62% of Americans said that we can declare victory even if “weapons of mass destruction” are never found. Of course most people say that – the war is already all but won and who doesn’t want to declare victory at this point? Just as we can look at the typical Arab reaction and see cognitive dissonance is the prime mover, so too can we look at these poll results and see exactly the same thing. The poll also shows that 81% support taking military action against Iraq. Again, what’s the surprise there? We’ve already taken military action and we have, for all intents and purposes, already won. Again, cognitive dissonance at work. Is it too much to ask for polls that actually give us some illuminating information? Anyway, once I learned what cognitive dissonance was, I became almost infinitely fascinated with it. In fact, my favorite moments come when I realize that it’s having an effect on me. When someone I admire does something really stupid, embarrassing, or malicious, and I start making excuses to myself on their behalf, I always get a little chuckle about good ol’ cognitive dissonance. Try it, you may enjoy it too. ...
Do meta tags still work for any search engines? It seems to me that these days they’re like little idols for marketing people. They don’t actually do anything, but if you don’t carry them around with you everywhere you go, evil spirits may get you. Maybe I’m totally wrong, but it just strikes me that they’re no good any more. I can’t imagine any reason why someone writing a search engine indexer would pay a whit of attention to them these days. ...
Salon has yet another interview with Paul Berman today.