The Freepers are getting all excited about stuffing the MoveOn ballot box. They’re so cute! Such a fervent belief in the democratic process! Not. But the priceless bit — I gotta quote the whole thing. Here. FOR THE THIRD TIME: This is not a FReeping opportunity - this is lunacy! These people are COMMUNISTS! THINK ABOUT IT …!! DO YOU REALLY WANT YOUR NAME ON A LIST ASSOCIATED WITH A COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION …?? ...
After my RSS rant, I’m glad to see Sam Ruby trying to solve the problem. For what my voice is worth, I support this effort.
Phil Carter mused on the Iyman Faris plea bargain over the weekend, to good effect. He’s dug up a claim that the government threatened to declare Faris an enemy combatant in order to get him to plea bargain. Phil explains why this is bad at length. It goes beyond the immediate fact that someone’s either an enemy combatant or not.
Political junkies might be interested in this news (original). Howard Dean’s 17 year old son was arrested for stealing booze from a local country club today. No big deal; the Senate Majority Leader’s son was just arrested for DUI. Rove’ll try and spin it, though.
Some musicians are peeved about single song sales (original) from the Apple iTunes Music Store. An attorney who works for the firm that represents Will Smith and Alanis Morissette claims it’s an artistic issue. “The fear among artists is that the work of art they put together, the album, will become a thing of the past.” Alas, Yahoo Shopping lists 26 singles from Mr. Smith and another 26 from the divine Ms. Morissette. I’m sure the attorney will be attending to this breach of artistic integrity immediately. ...
Ah, ArsDigita. For a while, Phillip Greenspun (original) was an Internet darling. He did some important work on database driven web sites, which wound up turning into a startup called ArsDigita. ArsDigita was very successful for a little while, and then went boom. Phillip and his former SO Eve Andersson have one perspective. I mention the personal relationship only because it becomes somewhat relevant in the recently posted alternate perspective from Michael Yoon. Yoon’s piece probably ought to be required reading for, I dunno, lots of people. Or perhaps for nobody, since the horse is now far from the barn and frolicking around in the pasture. Way too late to close the barn door now. But — speaking from a biased, management perspective — these three stories in conjunction demonstrate exactly why management is important. ...
WMD explanation of the week: they were looted. Sure, several hundred tons of neurotoxins were looted. So effectively and so secretively that we haven’t found even a single looter. Sounds likely. But OK, let’s grant ‘em that one. Let’s also admit that US forces have had no luck finding the “looted” WMD. Isn’t the solution obvious? Bring back Blix’s team; they’re professionals. Let them get back to work. After all, the IAEA found looted uranium a whole lot quicker than we could.
MSNBC scores the first review of Warren Zevon’s upcoming album. Eric Olsen says it’s a masterpiece. And the review made me sniffle.
BookSense allows you to order books online and pick them up at your local independent bookseller. Unfortunately, it’s dog slow, and I’m a bit perturbed by their offer to sell me a book named simply Harry Potter — seems to me that there aren’t enough words in that title. Also it would be better if they did not direct me to a bookstore in Canton when I live in Somerville.
I mentioned Paul Krugman’s piece on liquidity traps last month — I’d link to it again, but the NYT doesn’t have free archives. Pity. However, thanks to MetaFilter, I can show you this paper (original) (PDF) from the Dallas Federal Reserve. It’s a nice clean explanation of liquidity traps along with some speculation about ways to fend off the one we’re about to hit.