Where the money is going

Last night over dessert, Kurt brought up an interesting question: Just where is all the money allocated for the war in Iraq going? This surprised me, mainly because it’s been a sore spot with me for a long while. Well, I’ve found a (partial) answer, or at least a way to get at the answer. The U.S. Central Command, who’s running the show in both Iraq and Afghanistan, publish two newsletters, a CentCom newsletter and a Coalition Bulletin, just chock full of information on what’s going on in these two theaters. Frankly, I think that the administration has done a piss-poor job of sharing this kind of information.

Those interested in keeping track of the real progress in the  mid-east can subscribe to the newsletters here.

On a more personal note, it was great having dinner with Kurt and Patricia last night. We always have some terrific conversation, something I sorely miss since moving on to a new job.

8/25/2005 9:52:56 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics | world affairs

A Chilling Thought
Here’s a chilling thought, from The Huffington Post:  Freshmen entering college this fall were born in 1987. 1987! That was almost yesterday! It gives me chills…
8/24/2005 4:49:28 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

Make one person responsible...

On Signal vs. Noise, Jason Fried talks about making one person responsible for a single task. Amen to that. I’d never really considered just how important this is, until I was put in the same sort of situation recently. My first impression of this was to appreciate how empowering it felt.However, I think the more important point is the one that Jason makes: when you assign a single person to a task, it gets done.

By the way, 37 Signals has some products that look pretty compelling. Anyone in need of decent project management software (MS Project, ) should give theirs a try. As it is, I’m going to give their Ta-da list a ride around the block…

8/24/2005 9:07:08 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

What are they up to?
It’s official. Google Talk is up and running (in beta at least). For the life of me, I don’t know why we need yet another IM system. At least, this one is Jabber compatible (for what that’s worth). The boys at Google have previously said that they don’t get into new markets unless they had something significantly different / superior to offer. So far, I don’t see anything that meets that criterion in Google Talk.
8/24/2005 8:45:58 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

Michael Graham needs to go back to school

Michael Graham is one of those talk-radio hosts who likes to shoot-from-the-lip. Until recently, he had a show on Washington DC’s WMAL-AM radio station. On July 25th, he said that “Islam is a terrorist organization” (according to the Washington Post). He said this 23 times (just so that someone would know that this wasn’t just some sort of slip of the tongue). He was then was sufficiently unrepentant that WMAL fired him.

Okay, that’s all well and good. So, why does he need to go back to school?

Well, Mr. Graham has responded, on townhall.com, “The First Amendment and I have been evicted from ABC Radio…”.

I’m sick and tired of people not knowing what their own Constitution says regarding their rights. The Bill of Rights says “Congress shall make no law…”. It does not say that a person can’t be fired for saying something so stupid that it harms the private enterprise for which they work. Congress (or any other branch of the government) didn’t get anywhere near you, Mr. Graham. And, besides, you deserved what you got.

8/23/2005 2:45:12 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

Crackpots

On Monday, our own, home-grown crackpot, Pat Robertson advocated the assassination of the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. President Chavez has responded by stating that Mr. Robertson’s statement is a “terrorist” statement that needs to be investigated by the U.S. authorities.

I must say that I agree fully.

Granted, Mr. Chavez is no friend of the United States (hence Mr. Robertson’s comments). And, granted, Pat Robertson is a grade-A crackpot who has a long history of saying some ridiculous things. However, it should be noted that if a muslim religious leader were to make such a remark about President Bush, we’d be yelling for the same kind of investigation. And, Mr. Robertson is sitting on a big enough pile of money that he could go ahead and follow through himself.

People may want to dismiss Mr. Robertson’s comments as those of a crackpot. But, I wonder how many “crackpots” are there in Saudi Arabia quietly sending donations to Osama Bin Laden. Wouldn’t we want the Saudis to do something about that?

8/23/2005 2:25:35 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

Straw Poll Time

I’ve recently seen both Republican and Democratic straw polls for the 2008 Presidential nomination. Putting aside the fact of a presidential poll being done the year before the midterm elections (sheesh!), the results are a bit interesting.

On the Republican side, the top candidates are:

• Raul Giuliani
• George Allen (who? Senator from VA. oh.)
• Newt Gingrich
• Mit Romney
• John McCain

etc.

On the Democratic side:

• Wesley Clark
• Russ Feingold
• Al Gore
• Hillary Clinton
• Bill Richardson
• Mark Warner
• John Edwards

etc. (more candidates on the Demo side, because the last 3 are so close, and besides, I wanted to include John Edwards)

Other than George Allen (how the heck did he make the list? He has zero national exposure!), the Republican list looks pretty rational to me. Not that I think the top 3 are winnable candidates (maybe Giuliani, but I doubt it. His attractiveness is 9/11 related, and that’s becoming ancient history). Mit Romney is a possibility, being a governor. He has good presence too.

The Democratic side is a mess. Chris Bowers refers to the poll as the “Donkeys Gone Wild edition”. And I think that’s pretty accurate. The top 3 candidates are ridiculous (Al, you had your chance. Go work on your TV network). Hillary’s a possibility, I guess, but I don’t think she has the leadership chops that her husband has. The next three all fascinate me. They’d all have a chance to get my vote (of course, they’d have to get the nomination first, since I’m a Republican during the primaries  ).

Of course, as I said earlier, this is way early to be paying attention to this kind of stuff. But it’s fun anyway .

8/23/2005 11:50:47 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

The Religion of Science

As reported in the New York Times, a student in the audience of a recent scientific conference at the City College of New York asked, “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?”

To which, Herbert A. Hauptman, a Nobel laureate in chemistry responded with a quick and sharp “No!”.  Thankfully, his view is not one shared by all scientists.

More and more, I’ve seen a tendency for the non-religious in the US to adopt a world view where Science answers all questions and is considered “reality”. For those of us who remember our scientific method, we know that this is not the case. Science merely provides a “working model”, that helps to provide answers to questions in a mechanistic manner.

There is no basic conflict between scientific knowledge and belief in God, as many religious scientists will tell you. Now, this doesn’t mean that some religious tenets don’t conflict with current scientific knowledge (i.e. Creationism), but that’s an artifact of religious conservatism, not religious belief.

 

8/23/2005 10:01:11 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics | world affairs

Alas

Well, the other shoe has dropped. I won’t be seduced after all. The Walken for President campaign was a hoax. sigh.

You know, I’ve always considered myself pretty good at spotting these Internet hoaxes, and I didn’t just accept this one at face value, but I guess we all get fooled sometime.

 

8/22/2005 8:28:52 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Economic Times...

I was catching up on Michael Barone’s blog (hey, Michael, where’s that RSS feed?), and followed a link to an old entry discussing why people think that economic are bad while indicators say otherwise. Other than a dig at the “mainstream media” (more on that topic later), Michael supposes that people concentrate on the issues that they perceive to be negative at the time. I think, more to the point, people use their own feelings about the economy as their litmus test regarding how well/badly the economy is doing. If they’re feeling shaky about how things are, then (obviously) the economy’s doing badly. If they’re feeling good, then the economy’s doing good.

Notice I said how they feel, not how things are actually going for them. I think there’s still a lot of insecurity in the public, and that’s what’s causing this general feeling of economic woe. During the Clinton years, people felt better about the economy because Clinton made us feel good about it. He was that kind of President. As much as I like GW, he’s more of an “everyman” than a real “leader”, he really doesn’t inspire confidence in the people, and I think that this is what’s showing now.

Regarding Michael’s reference to the “mainstream media”: Hey, Michael! The last time I looked, US News was part of the mainstream media. It amazes me how many people who are part of the media that don’t consider themselves that way. Own up to it folks. We’re all in the same boat.

Except that, as a blogger, I’m really not in the mainstream.

8/17/2005 4:48:21 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Once again I'm being seduced by the dark side...

So, Christopher Walken is running for president. You know, the idea’s just crazy enough to work. After all, it worked for Ronald Reagan, remember him?

Why do I keep getting pulled in by these out-of-the-mainstream candidates? Does anybody remember John Anderson?

8/17/2005 9:09:05 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Guns and Sex...
Once again on Instapundit.com (Glenn Reynolds, you’re terrific!):

LAW PROFESSOR KENNETH ANDERSON observes take your daughter to shoot day.

To which a reader left the comment:

…in some quarters, it is believed that it would be better for your daughter to be totally ignorant of how to use a gun …

This immediately touched a nerve in me. It sounds so much like opposition to sex education. Frankly, I think that both sentiments are anti-American. Okay, I know. Them’s fightin’ words. But, the way I see it, fundamental to our Bill of Rights Freedoms is a basic right to make an informed choice. As many like to say, this is what our Founding Fathers fought for…

8/16/2005 9:57:03 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

RSS vs. Web Feeds

There seems to be a lot of talk lately around the name for this syndication thing that we’re all using. From what I’m hearing, various people are upset that Microsoft is thinking of using the term “Web Feeds” instead of “RSS” to refer to their syndication support.

At first, I agreed. Why play with names? Why gratuitously use a different name than the industry uses? Then, as I was reading Asa Dotzler’s comments on the issue, I got to thinking about it: RSS is a syndication protocol. Atom is a syndication protocol. These guys are different animals, even though they provide essentially the same service. And just what is this service? Well, I guess “Web Feeds” is as good a name as any.

I wonder how the Atom folks feel about this controversy. After all, I’m sure they wouldn’t like the general service to be called RSS…

 

By the way, I love the RSS button from Dave Winer's post. I just might change my xml icons to use this instead .

8/16/2005 9:37:02 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development | general

Well, that was painless

I just upgraded to the Gold version of Das Blog 1.8 . The process was quite painless. I did get a new copy of Beyond Compare to take care of the site config comparisons. Mostly, it was a matter of copying my backed up files back into the uploaded new software.

My thanks to Scott and Omar for a great job!

 

8/12/2005 9:45:07 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

Finally, some insight into what's going on in the Middle East

Instapundit reports that Michael Totten, in his new Tech Central Station column, has commented on the West’s obsession with Muslims “hating” us…

He makes some darn good points. It’s easy to think that this is simply them against us. But, what’s going on is much bigger. Through various circumstances (plenty of blame to go around here), we’ve become embroiled in the cultural struggles of the Middle East, most of which involve Muslim groups. Surprise! Most of the Middle East is Muslim! Who’d of thought…

8/12/2005 11:49:27 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  

Marriage with a Twist

Instapundit reports that two men in Toronto are planning to get married. The twist in this case is that the men are heterosexual. Apparently, they just want the tax benefits of being married. This could be the beginning of the other shoe falling in the whole “gay marriage” debate: if (supposedly) traditional restrictions on marriage are outmoded and gay folk are allowed to marry, then what about all of the other marriage restrictions? What about brothers and sisters? What about polygamy?

For the record (just in case you’re getting the wrong idea here), I’m in favor of gay marriage. I think building strong family ties is good for society, and our government should be supporting it. I just wonder if society (especially those whose support of gay marriage is a knee jerk response to certain right wing groups) is ready for the ramifications.

8/12/2005 11:35:08 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | politics | world affairs

ESPN has announced a second season of The Contender! Yeeha!

As many of you know, I became a reluctant fan of The Contender, Mark Burnett’s boxing show. It was a cross between reality show gimickry and (in my opinion) sports done right. You got to know the participants well, and the boxing matches were some of the best I’ve ever seen. Now, granted, I’m not a big boxing fan (remember the “reluctant” earlier?). But, (believe it or not) my mother is, and I’ve watched quite a bit of boxing over the years, mostly real yawners. That wasn’t true for the matches in The Contender.

Now, I know some folks had real problems with the way that the matches were portrayed. Since they weren’t live, Burnett and company had the opportunity to “improve” the drama in the cutting room. Still, I think that The Contender made for great TV, and am really looking forward to the next season on ESPN.

8/12/2005 9:41:02 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV