A relatively brief but compelling prediction of the predilections of the current generation of members of our armed forces by Ray Kimball can be found at The Huffington Post.
Some of the things I’ve been reading lately:
This one is disturbing - UK photographer chased down and detained for taking pix at fun fair
60 essayists analyze future problems and prospects in 50-year forecast
More disturbing reading
Things have changed in the past 7 years, and not for the better…
Stolen from Neil Gaiman’s Journal, clearing out the tabs:
New book: Were Iraqi defectors coached to embellish?
Why your food is costing more money
Paul Krugman, Master Of The Space Lanes
Credit Scores 102: A Crisis, and Some Changes
Obama’s racial problems transcend Wright
Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera
Dr. Steven Taylor at Poliblog has a commentary on the comic book logic being used by some who believe the students at Virginia Tech didn’t act enough like “men”.
There are some posts that show why sorting through all the dross in the vast majority of weblogs is worth the time:
Velociworld - Requiem for the Senator
Although knowing the context underlying the tale told helps, it is not necessary. The fact that “the Senator” is the author’s father becomes apparent when reading, and the full, rich texture of the relationship that has been described in previous posts by the author is hinted at sufficiently to encourage further exploration of that history.
At The Politburo Diktat there is a back of the envelope estimate of troop levels that might be needed in Iraq to achieve what we have been told is the mission there, along with a brief comment on mission-creep.
What is just as interesting as the analysis is the origin of the piece; the author is a right-leaning blogger who started the Raging RINOs (Republicans and Independents Not Overdosed on the party kool-aid) although he has passed administration of that group on to another.
In an overheated partisan atmosphere such as we have now, considering the source of arguments is more important than ever. This case is not one where the author is trying to discredit the party in power for political purposes, and therefore should be regarded as more credible than what has become typical in blogworld.
From Scott Adams’ The Dilbert Blog:
Now, since I know from the comments that many of my readers are – inexplicably – also troglodytes, allow me to include a disclaimer here. I’m way more hawkish than you are. It just doesn’t look that way because my thinking is that if a bully punches you, you should run away. Later, when he’s asleep, put a bullet in his head and leave the gun in his little brother’s crib so it looks like a sibling squabble. In other words (again, for the troglodytes) being tough doesn’t require being stupid. It’s totally optional.
I’m not pro-Iranian or anti-American. I’d pave the rest of the world to save my American cat. The only thing I oppose is muddy thinking. If we need to send Americans into harm’s way, I want reasons and I want a full discussion of the options. Excuuuse the fuck out of me for asking for them.
Adams has captured in two short paragraphs the frustrations that many moderates have felt for the past six years, and his final line shows how far the pendulum has swung towards the extremists and their absolutist demands.
With intentional irony, I call for stamping out intolerance in our politics.
Scott Adams, whose The Dilbert Blog has had many surprises but managed to avoid a schtick that would become tiresome, has written a post on self-criticism in the context of being American citizens that captures exactly what I have tried to convey in my three years of blogging at Random Fate.
From the final paragraph of his post comes a succinct statement of the key idea:
I know this post sounds harsh, but I think self-criticism is always the first step toward a solution.
We as a nation have problems, folks, and we need to find solutions, not knee-jerk. Reacting by saying “My country, right or wrong,” is both idiotic and the shortest path to national oblivion.
Just ask the Romans…
—
(There will be more from me on that reference later… but the “barbarians at the gates” are not always uncivilized, they may merely be differently-civilized, and we misunderstand that crucial distinction at our peril)
…go read Velociman’s musings at his weblog, Velociworld. Where else but in blogworld can one run across this description:
Now, the Senator loved himself a good piss when he was in the throes of Canadian whisky, so much so that he would ensconce himself upon the terlit (he sat to pee. How weird is that?) and have a good little nap, Marlboro butt a smoking in his limp fingers. This wasn’t his normal state of nature, of course, he being a rather formidable and erect, stiff-backed sort of man as a rule, but of a weekend he could let the hair down, if a crewcut can do that sort of thing.
The topic and denouement of this short, short tale may strike some as vulgar, but one must understand that vulgarity is and has always been an undercurrent of the Society (capitalization intentional) of the South. Read and learn, because Velociman’s writings about “the Senator” reveal the true nature of the South past, a history we need to learn from, for both its virtues and its faults, and Velociman captures the mood perfectly in a way that is all too rare for me in my attempts.
Technorati Tags: recommended reading, South, Southern gothic, the South
In response to some simple-minded assertions, here is a long list of links, most related, some not:
If You’re Not Doing Something Wrong, You Still Have Something To Worry About
Rumsfeld Reveals Split Over Interrogations
Talking Points Memo on Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) remarks at the Hayden confirmation hearings
Social Security for Illegal Aliens?
America’s Future…isn’t in America
AT&T Whistle-Blower’s Evidence
In the hunt for golden buckyballs
Almost Enough to Make me Buy a Mac
Interactive graphic of the flooding of New Orleans because of Katrina
The Eternal Value of Privacy from which comes:
Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? (”Who watches the watchers?”) and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest — or just blackmail — with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies — whoever they happen to be at the time.
Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.
So, given what has happened in the last six years, what do you think, and what do you want for the future?
Quote of the day:
On the war I am now slightly to the right of Newt Gingrich. Jesus.
-Michael Reynolds at The Mighty Middle
I know how he feels…
So what does this mean?
Given that the author actually used my image from the “link to Random Fate” section of my sidebar, how could I not note that Trending Towards Future Shock has been added to both my RSS reader and my blogroll. Yet, the interesting viewpoint presented on the weblog should not be neglected, so I am including it in my “Recommended Reading” category, because even if you don’t agree with what you read, at least it will prompt you to think, and that is indeed far more than most bloggers who aspire to comment on current issues can accomplish.
Technorati Tags: recommended reading, weblogs