� This is the Answer, What Was the Question? | Main | Hot or Not? �

November 16, 2005

Wednesday Fragments

Dissent!
Holy smokes, can it be that the Congress is showing some spine? Have Republicans suddenly remembered that the founders knew what they were talking about when they separated powers? Could it be that political capital only goes as far as Pennsylvania Avenue? Heavens sakes, for a minute it seemed so. But now, the President is fighting back, like a jilted lover. So will we let him stalk us? Time will tell.

A monthly status report on Iraq is hardly worth pissing and moaning over. I'd appreciate it. Even Clinton gave us chalkboard talks on Bosnia. What I wouldn't give for a wartime president who could actually swagger. Well, W tried.

Googlevision
I've just discovered a couple new things about Google which helps clarify stuff that they are doing. It's exciting.

The first item is Google Sitemaps. There's no way I can describe it better that Google does, but it looks like this is the thing that can put all the free webcounters out of business. It's clearly aimed at geeks like me who run websites, and as soon as I get out of my office and configure a bunch of it up, I'll tell you if my enthusiasm is well placed. I suspect that there will be a bunch of side benefits which will include telling me what are the most popular pages in my sites as well as some referring information. But that may be a bit much to expect. If Google has the audacity to do that kind of stuff, we may be in for a real treat. Of course they have more than enough capital and brainwidth to subsume all of the NetGenesis clones out there.

The second thing is Googlebase. I don't see much of what the point is, but it has got some folks thinking a revolution in database tech might be afoot. I'm skeptical, but I'm not betting a huge amount against Google.


Posted by mbowen at November 16, 2005 05:17 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4634

Comments

I think that republicans are influenced by dems telling them how evil they are. So Bush is always trying to show what a nice fellow he is. i also think that republicans for the most part don't take politics as seriously as dems and liberals do. reps make a distinction between politics and life. they assume that whoever is in office their houses or jobs or communities or businesses will go on basically the same way. dems know that politics is life. they want to get the power to make radical changes, like making a law that a family of three can't have more than two bedrooms, or taxing windows, or some income equalizing measure. dems also figure, among other crazy things, that if everyone was subjected to a few years of sensitivity or culture education the world would be better and no one would need religion any more. republicans except for the most radical can't believe dems and libs really mean the stuff they say so they don't get too excited.

Posted by: Anita at November 17, 2005 07:19 AM

Liberals are motivated by the idea that success creates tragedy, and they do everything they can to mitigate the tragedy that success may create. What's most important is the humanistic, I guess.

I was struck by a podcast I listened to the other night on the Skid Row lowlife and bums. The writer from the LATimes couldn't get over the fact that there was a mentally disabled ex-Julliard student living amongst the human wreckage that is Skid Row. And he kept saying 'surely we can do better than this'. Of course we do - the way our society is built, in a county of 14 millions, only 500 or so end up on Skid Row. They are, by definition, those that can't be institutionally helped.

And yet the liberal impulse is to build and institution and a protocol for each and every one of life's eventualities. At a certain point that impulse is destructive. It is most destructive in a free society because you reduce the acceptable number of unregulated endeavors.

Whether or not Democrats or Republicans are more or less efficient in putting conservative/libertarian or liberal/Hobbsian guidelines on society is not so much the point as the opposite directions we principly want to go in facing something like Skid Row.

Posted by: Cobb [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 17, 2005 01:24 PM

A quick read of the CENTCOM, SOCOM, Mudville Gazette, and Michael Yon will give you almost everything you'd ever want to know about what's going on in the WOT.

And it'll do it in more detail than any distillation the whitehouse staff would ever put together.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at November 19, 2005 10:43 PM