January 27, 2004
body slamming for dean
i you had any doubts about how cool he was get this: al franken broke his glasses while taking out a larouche supporter who was trying to shout down dean at a rally.
January 26, 2004
the long haul
billmon wrote up a post just after the iowa caucus that makes some excellent points about the long term view that progressives need to take if we're going to repair the damage that the bush adminstration has inflicted on american democracy:
The task of building a progressive coalition that can turn America in a fundamentally different direction is a vast undertaking -- so vast as to seem almost impossible: as impossible, perhaps, as ending segregation must have seemed to the early civil rights activists of the 1920s and '30s. Under the most favorable conditions imaginable (conditions which we are extremely unlikely to see) the process will take years, if not decades.
... this is exactly what the right did in the wake of Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964. Conservatives spent the next 16 years building on the foundation they laid in the Goldwater campaign -- exploiting new fundraising techniques (direct mail) establishing new organizations (the Heritage Foundation, the Committee on the Present Danger) creating new media (Human Events, Conservative Digest) and building a parallel political establishment affiliated with, but outside of, the Republican Party. When the time came to reach for power -- in 1980 and again in 1994 -- the right was ready.
the post starts with some interesting speculations on the way the race would shake out in new hampshire and the way the media has continually tried to keep the race open.
america the empire
josh marshal has a brilliant article up on the new yorker examining america's empire.
... "During the Clinton administration, the United States employed an indirect approach in imposing its will on other nations." That "indirect approach" might more properly be termed a policy of leading by consensus rather than by dictation. But Johnson is right about its superior efficacy. American power is magnified when it is embedded in international institutions, as leftists have lamented. It is also somewhat constrained, as conservatives have lamented. This is precisely the covenant on which American supremacy has been based. The trouble is that hard-line critics of multilateralism focussed on how that power was constrained and missed how it was magnified.
Conservative ideologues, in calling for an international order in which America would have a statelike monopoly on coercive force, somehow forgot what makes for a successful state. Stable governments rule not by direct coercion but by establishing a shared sense of allegiance. In an old formula, "domination" gives way to "hegemony"--brute force gives way to the deeper power of consent. This is why the classic definition of the state speaks of legitimate force. In a constitutional order, government accepts certain checks on its authority, but the result is to deepen that authority, rather than to diminish it. Legitimacy is the ultimate "force multiplier," in military argot. And if your aim is to maintain a global order, as opposed to rousting this or that pariah regime, you need all the force multipliers you can get.
i'd highly encourage everyone to spend the next ten minutes reading this article.
January 25, 2004
unix spam tools
i've been been on an anti-spam tear for the last week. found a couple of tools:
- handlespam
- a perl script written by one of the spamassassin developers that lets you report an entire mbox full of spam to spamcop, spamassassin's bayesian filter and razor (et al).
- spamcup
- another perl script. it gives you a command line interface to spamcop's web based reporting. now you can avoid repetitive motion injury from clicking report now/submit 120 times.
January 22, 2004
moving
been a while since i've done much posting. that'll probably change soon. i'm moving into a new apartment on feb 5 and it'll have internet included in the rent. i've managed to make it a year and a half with out internet at home and i'm over it. not having the worlds greatest distraction at my beck and call did help my focus but at this point most of my classes have some online component so it's turning into a requirement.
the new apartment should be pretty cool. the place i'm in now has a bunch of space but it's on the inside of a U shaped building so it's really dark in there all day long. i'm looking forward to having a window that faces out and gets some morning light.
January 19, 2004
say good bye to the green
i've finally gotten around to updating the templates on the website. i'd been rocking the table based layout for at least two years. when i noticed that esr had reworked his site to use css it was clearly time to act.
i've still got to finish up some of the conversion but within the next couple of days most stuff should be XHTML strict + CSS.
January 12, 2004
for everything money can't buy...
i haven't been posting as much about news events as i used to but certain things just can't be ignored. today's announcement that the bush administration is launching an investigation to determine how a document labeled secret found it's way into the 60 minutes interview with former treasury secretary o'neil. as usual, josh marshal sums it up perfectly:
Number of days between Novak column outing Valerie Plame and announcement of investigation: 74 days.
Number of days between O'Neill 60 Minutes interview and announcement of investigation: 1 day.
Having the administration reveal itself as a gaggle of hypocritcal goons ... priceless.
i'd encourage everyone to keep checking his site to follow the story.
January 11, 2004
to infinity and beyond!
i'm all for giving nasa a budget increase to get us back into space but i'm a bit suspicious of bush's plan, josh marshal summed up my concerns perfectly:
And where's the money come from on this one? I thought we were halving the deficit in five years.
And who gets the Martian reconstruction contracts?
January 10, 2004
crying wolf
bruce schneier's got a good piece up on salon detailing how the false alarms that lead to the cancellation of the air france and british air flight demonstrate underlying problems in our intelligence agencies. i couldn't agree with him more.
week free from school
thanks to all the horrible weather i got a 4 day break from school. getting four weeks off for winter break is almost like going to a university with a civilized schedule.
it's been an experience watching portlanders dealing with the snow. no one seems to understand that you need to shovel the snow off sidewalks. i guess there'll need to be a couple of lawsuits to get that message across.
January 04, 2004
india, the next super power
talking points memo has a post up with excerpts from an interview with peter drucker. drucker makes the point that india, not china may well be the rising star in asia. josh marshall seizes on what this might mean for us foreign policy. i've always wondered why we were so focused on china and not india. our pakistan favoritism has always annoyed me, do we support the worlds largest democracy or the dictatorship that brought us the taliban (not that we didn't have a direct hand in that)?
January 03, 2004
new photos
i've finally stated getting my backlog of photos up on the website. i've been sorting through three months worth and the best of them are now in the portland.random gallery. i've still got a bunch inspired by john margaris' freeway paintings that i'm picking through. i'm going to try to get a gallery together this weekend.
January 02, 2004
new years
had a nice new years, it's snowed twice in the last week. it's unheard of for portland. the pretty much just shut the city down. i'm always a bit annoyed when it snowed, i guess having seen it for so long sort of takes the fun out of it. i do get a kick out of watching the foreign exchange student squealing with delight as they take each others pictures. until yesterday i'd never seen anyone use an umbrella as a shield in a snowball fight. the weather's supposed to say like this for the next week or so.
the snow was kind of a bitch for charlie and i when we were trying to drive up last week. we were making great time until just after we crossed the state line into oregon. going down the grade from the pass it was tail lights as far as you could see. there were probably 6 cars spun out along the side of the road and not enough tow trucks to go around. our 8pm arrival in portland turned into a 10:30pm arrival.
sushi marina reviewed
brad's review of sushi marina is up on the web. i'm very happy with my quote:
The place has an impressive selection of handrolls. Highlights include the Sansei ($4.50), with unagi, avocado, cucumbers and teriyaki glaze and the Marina ($4.50), crystal shrimp and bay scallops in a spicy sauce. I had to order one after watching my buddy Andrew eat one.
"How is that?" I asked. "It looks really good."
"It is. In fact, it's so good that I'm not going to offer you a bite."
