Saturday, February 02, 2002

Lectern thumping - Gay Alcorn writes that "George Bush's State of the Union speech this week was short, at just under 50 minutes. It was not particularly eloquent. But it was one of the most bellicose in years..." That got me thinking about belicose [warlike in manner or temperament; pugnacious] and why a president in only his first year in office needs to be quite so outspoken. From such documentaries as Wag the Dog and Yes Minister I have learnt that wars are only necessary to divert ones attention from home affairs. [Victor Echo Zulu] Wag the Dog actually wasn't a documentary about the Clinton presidency, although it is an obvious assumption. The movie was actually made before Clinton started "wagging the dog" at various small countries--so rather than being a documentary, perhaps it's where he got the idea. comment () trackback ()  9:02:00 PM     Once again I'm experimenting with different themes. Right now it's the "Woodlands" theme. comment () trackback ()  8:53:35 PM     Long-running Scandal in the Libertarian Party. A long-running scandal in the Libertarian Party is met with the typical response seen in other political parties. It's not at all surprising that any group of people, much less a politically-oriented one, should find itself embroiled in some degree of scandal. The whole event tells us much about politics, power, and the LP itself. [kuro5hin.org] The is a helpful explanation of what was going on with the national Libertarian Party. I've seen lots of angry writing from L. Neil Smith about how they are a bunch of crooks, but this is the first time I've seen someone explain how they're crooks. comment () trackback ()  7:39:15 PM     I found a nice explanation of what a hawala is on the Libertarian Samizdata site. comment () trackback ()  7:15:39 PM     US 'ready to go it alone'. One of President George W Bush's key security advisers says the US is prepared to act alone to protect itself from terrorist attack. [BBC News: world] I should hope so! comment () trackback ()  5:49:15 PM     I was reading the manual for Compaq's iPaq (out of curiousity, I don't own one) when I noticed something surprising. In the section on charging batteries, there was a warning that if the battery ran out all data would be lost. I had thought that PocketPC devices used Flash RAM, so that the memory contents would be safe if power ran out. That seems like an obvious feature for a platform that claims to be superior to the Palm OS. Also, the iPaq's battery is apparently built in, so there's no way to use ordinary AA or AAA batteries if the user won't be near a power source. Is this flaw common to all PocketPC devices, or just the iPaq? The PocketPC OS is presented as being suitable for stand-alone devices, but how can thdt be if the suffer from the same memory loss as the Palm devices? comment () trackback ()  5:15:59 PM

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