Sunday, May 18, 2003

Apparently "Tinderbox" notes don't have any size limit--or if they do, it's over 500K. This is much better than the 32K limits in Filemaker and HyperCard. However, it's hard to experiment with given the demo's inability to save files. 9:47:56 PM    comment () "A cache of vacuum cleaners". Dogged WMD hunters find all kinds of junk -- faucets, cleaning fluid, a science project -- besides the deadly weapons supposedly hidden in Iraq. As this account makes clear, chaos and confusion conspire to keep a search team chasing phantom leads. One major problem: no one on the team speaks or reads Arabic. [Hit & Run] This would be funny if so many people hadn't died with "weapons of mass destruction" as a pretext. 9:35:32 PM    comment () Manuel Miles, aka Kapt Kanada at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Lessons To Be Learnt From Switzerland - good lessons. Unfortunately, the Swiss have recently been forgetting them. [tle] The Swiss still carry swords to political meetings, in order to remind politicians that the ultimate power resides with the individual citizens. If they don't like what they hear a politician say, they can fall upon him and cut him to pieces. That may not be comforting to the politicos, but I bet it is to the citizens. It would certainly change the nature of public speeches in Canada. 4. The Swiss are armed to the teeth. The Swiss have a citizen soldiery; they are, themselves, the army. Every able-bodied Swiss male serves in the army at the age of twenty, then remains armed with his full military kit (all of which is kept in his home) until the age of forty. For several weeks every year he is excused from his employment for training. This, combined with the preparations made at the border passes and tunnels, has kept Switzerland free from all foreign invaders but Napoleon for over 700 years. The Swiss can effectively mobilise in a matter of hours, which gives them an enormous advantage over any potential invader. During the Second World War, the Swiss maintained their armed neutrality even when completely surrounded by the Axis powers. They even showed Nazi generals their defences in order to both taunt and daunt them! One such, touring a border fortress, said to a Swiss soldier, "You know, when we come, we will have you outnumbered two-to-one. What will you do then?" The Swiss citizen calmly replied, "We will shoot twice, then go home." The Nazis never dared invade. [End the War on Freedom] 6:17:25 PM    comment ()

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