Bill Quick (Daily Pundit) is conducting pledge week. Useful Fools doesn’t have a tip jar. However, if you’ve ever felt like there’s been something on this site that’s worthy of a contribution, please consider a contribution to Bill Quick instead. It wouldn’t be the blogosphere without him.
(If these words look familiar, it’s because I stole the whole item from Zonitics, because I agree with his sentiment, and beyond that, am shameless.)
Do you remember former Senator William Proxmire’s “Golden Fleece Award?” The was handed out to silly sounding scientific projects - projects usually with real value. But that didn’t bother Proxmire, who regularly bathed in the resulting publicity. Responsible scientists despised the man and his grandstanding.
Something similar is afoot with the Pentagon’s “Terrorism Futures Market.”
Read the rest of this entry »
I found a new blog well worth reading.
Just as my blog friend Jon Ray keeps track of PC madness and in general dissects leftism with Aussie flair and an academic expert’s knowledge, Greg Yardley applies his expertise to commiewatch, focusing specifically on the American communist left.
Greg used to be a member of a communist organization before he saw the light, and he knows what he is talking about.
The “commies” are still out there, nasty and crazy as ever. Greg’s expertise in the subject is demonstrated by his staff position with David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture.
An old article on this blog has stirred up a heated discussion with a self-identified German lawyer. I think it is quite interesting as a look into the mind of one apparently educated German who is apparently very angry at America and our “arrogance.”
I don’t know quite what to make of this, but it is interesting.
See this article and the following comment section.
Feel free to chime in… but please try to preserve decorum!
Here I am, taking a break from a crash programming project (Friday 3PM I heard that the September due date became instead next Wednesday)… so once again I’m browsing blogspaces. I wandered into a couple of Randall Parkers blogs, and the thought occurred to me that they are pretty amazing. I always enjoy Randalls blogs, because there is so much meat and they is so well thought out.
But how does he get the time to do it? And to read all the stuff in various fields necessary to feed the blog vortex (he is obviously a polymath)? Does this guy have a job? Does he sleep?
Anyway, his blogs are always worth a look…
Anyway, well done, Randall!
Everett, Washington seems to believe in supporting the military, unless it messes up the view!
The Navy Times reports that a radar, crucial to our anti-ballistic missile system, has been rejected by the Everett City Council:
“In its resolution, the council listed several concerns regarding the proposed missile radar, including unknown health risks, environmental impacts, and the “negative visual impact to Everett’s waterfront.”
NIMBY Weenies!
Listening to Col. David Hackworth on CNN, I am amazed at how consistently myopic he continues to be.
Hackworth is one of America’s most decorated soldiers, and proved in Vietnam that he was a courageous and deadly commander. His books are fascinating and moving (I highly recommend “Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts”).
However, he also proved that he could not see the larger picture when he turned against the Vietnam War in his poorly reasoned book “About Face”. He argued that the war was unwinnable, and yet shortly afterwards the war was won by Richard Nixon’s shift in tactics (the Haiphong mining, the Hanoi bombings, and continued Air Force aid to the ARVN). Only the subsequent perfidy of the US Congress led to the loss of Vietnam (hardly Hackworth’s argument, although ironically his widely publicized about face might have contributed to the political change).
Ever since he has been singing the same tune. The Pentagon (”perfumed princes” in his phrase) are always wrong. The troops are always being let down. The political leaders are always liars. The strategy is always stupid and he knows a better one.
Now he is saying exactly the same thing. He even brought up the old Vietnam saw about destroying a village in order to save it. We are a week into the war and all Hack can see is blunders by generals and civilian officials.
Hack is not always wrong. He certainly knows a lot about fighting and has a network of lower ranking officer informants. But it would be nice to hear him actually find something positive once in a while.
He has never demonstrated a strategic viewpoint. It is not surprising the he is a retired Colonel and not a retired General. Generals get paid to make and execute strategy. Colonels get paid to carry it out.
Last week I was pleased to discover that I could get live streaming feeds from the network cameras in Baghdad. These were available from CNN and ABC with a purchase from Real of their “RealOne SuperPass.”
This is a revolutionary concept. Rather than providing news as an editor sees fit, or even the live news from commentators, they were allowing the viewers to watch the raw news, totally unedited, as it happened.
So I signed up. My thought was to leave the video running on one of my monitors while I was working. And it was most interesting… yesterday’s bombing of the information ministry almost knocked me out of my chair as the normally quiet speaker suddenly came to life.
Unfortunately, it seems that neither CNN nor ABC understand the value of this service. Their edited, TV-on-the-web services appear quite reliable, while the live feed is not. ABC’s Baghdad camera hasn’t worked since yesterday. CNN’s Baghdad camera had no sound when I first tried it. Today, it had sound for a while, but it has stopped. Note that both of these feeds are from the same camera which is commonly seen on the news networks.
Obviously these old media companies don’t understand! Some of us would rather watch the news as it happens rather than only see what their editors select, when their editors choose. Haven’t they noticed the web-cam phenomenon over the last several years?
If the companies understood this new media, they would keep their live camera feeds working. They might even have more of them. They might experiment with ways to make money from this new media.
Here I am, 42 minutes before the start of war, and Google gives as it’s top story this insane Ottawa Citizen headline:
Saddam’s obstinacy signals start of war
Now the Iraqi president’s only hope is a long shot: that protesters will force Bush to sue for peace.
Allright, already! It’s time to stop messing around. First lets grab Iraq (or what’s left of it). Then we don’t need Saudi airbases or oil or… well, we don’t need the bastards one little bit! So let’s simply replace their government (quietly at first). We can let the rulers all retire to their expensive homes in the west. The mullahs can all (in)voluntarily retire to devil’s island or some other French paradise (has anyone noticed that the French empire included some of the most god-awful places on earth?).
Meanwhile we nuke the Norks, or in some other way dispose of Dear Leader and his buddies.
Oh, and meanwhile, Iran needs work. Soon. Time to give the government to the people and the nuclear weapons facilities to the junk heap.
So let’s get started. I am seriously sick of waiting for the Battle of Iraq to start… we’ve got lots of stuff to do once it’s over… Saudi Arabia, Iran, Korea, Cuba, Libya… it’s gonna be a busy few years (unless Hilary gets elected in 2004).
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