Monthly Archives: August 2004

Just Frustrated

Rant: Why has no one done anything with this Nov. 20, 2002 George W. Bush quotation? Bob Woodward used it in his book and the Washington Post, and I heard Bush saying it on 60 Minutes (It was what turned my lifelong Republican mom against Bush!). I think someone like MoveOn needs to just run an ad with a photo of Bush and his following statement: “I’m the commander, I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation….” Any idea how to get this idea to the right organization?

Conservatism and what’s wrong with it

Phil Agre has written an excellent article on Conservatism, both defining what it is and illustrating its opposition to democracy and equality.

Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again, liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions are also simple…

UPDATE August 2006:  I’m adding the keyword “aristocracy” to this, because that’s the real crux of Agre’s argument.

How real is real?

OK, a question for the jewelry enthusiasts among you. Does it matter if a diamond was mined in Africa or “manufactured in Florida”:http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html ? If diamonds stop being expensive and rare, are they still beautiful? Are they still desirable?

We’re winning the spam war

…against blog spam, at least. Thanks to “MT-Blacklist”:http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/ and diligent spam-swatting by our authors, this site has sucessfully repelled thousands of attempts to hijack comments pages. Good job!

Now if I could just get something that effective for my e-mail…

Space Race II progress

Space Daily has an engaging “overview of X Prize progress”:http://www.spacedaily.com/news/xprize-04u.html, including both the trials and the triumphs of the frontrunners. Even the mistakes are exciting, as fun to follow as the series of progressively-more-impressive rocket tests in “October Sky”. Go teams!