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More Iraq
One oft-repeated trope about Iraq is that Iran and Syria don’t have any interest in an unstable Iraq. Why? While I’m sure that is not their ideal situation, I’m sure that a vibrant pro-Western democracy would be worse in their opinion.
Also the possible strategy of doubling down (a “troop surge”) is doomed to failure. The Iranians and Syrians can trade off lives and money at a very favorable ratio to them for the foreseeable future.
However this is a moot point. Enough highly motivated factions are in Iraq to make the eventual breakup a certainty. What we should be doing is facilitating the breakup instead of denying it.
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Surreal
It’s four in the morning, I’ve spent all day fighting with asp.net configuration problems and all night been fighting with a cpu that seems to be DOA. I still don’t have my new lens.
Then I smell smoke. The neighborhood behind me is filled with smoke and there is a large fire burning behind them.
The photo is apropos of nothing. The fire is out now. There were two fire trucks and several police cars.
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Ajax is a seductive swamp
Specifically the Ajax.net toolkit. It would seem that one can’t retrofit an existing site, though who knows why.
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A useful axiom
In my first advanced macroeconomics class my professor defined truth as “The consensus of informed opinion”. I remembered that for some reason today.
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Two cool tech things
- The tale of a family in Vermont that lives totally off the electrical grid, and how they do it.
- Radar Goliath
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Tuesday rapid fire
- Art of Innovation
- A very good analysis of the ISG report, specifically
The risk of surging any troops is summed up in the Sixth and Seventh Books of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War. I refer to the story of the Sicilian Expedition, in which the Athenians invade Sicily in support of allies there. But as problems mount with the operation, more and more reinforcements are sent, so that the consequences of failure rise from the merely serious to the monumental.
Which is something to bear in mind.
- Ouch
- RentGlass.com – Lenses in this case
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The two funniest things I’ve seen today
- The wonderful YouTube Series – “Will It Blend” featuring marbles, cell phones, rake handles, etc
- An edited version of Pulp Fiction that contains only the F-word. Surprisingly long. Not safe for work by any means.
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It’s been a little while
Sorry for the light blogging.
Periodically my mind wonders back to the Mathew Paris essay “Nature Does Not Exist“, where he states that there are few meaningful differences in application or effect between religion and science. Then my thoughts turned to Alan Paulk’s line “Religion is first century technology” and how that tracks with Robert Kaplan’s assertion that Islam is an excellent religion for hard times (paraphrase).
Then I think the original (to me) thought that technology does not replace spirituality, or compete with it either, but merely pushes it back to another level of abstraction. This leads me to think that the modern conception of a distinction between the religious and the secular is probably new and not meaningful.
And that’s what has been in the back of my head for the past few days.
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Lines of the moment
From Freakwater’s song “One Big Union”
Don’t the truth look bad up next to a pretty lie?
and
False hope is the seed in the field of greed that we must plow.
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We all knew cell phones could spy on you…
Now it seems to be confirmed
The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.
And if the FBI can do it, talented hackers can do it too. One can be tracked (more or less) by a cell phone too.