Here's some pictures just smuggled out of Lebanon that depict Hezbollah fighters setting up heavy weapons from residential areas in Lebanon.
Death to the dogs.
We could have taken out both of the bastards at once. All it would have taken was one well-placed Tomahawk.
Oh well.
Here is an interesting feature article from eXile, a Moscow-based alternative newspaper largely run by American (or at least English-speaking) ex-pats. The article is by one Mark Ames, the founder and editor of the paper, and comes from June 2003.
A bit late, I know.
The prima facie appearance of the article is a committed Leftist critiquing his own cause. He makes some fantastic points about why the Left is currently descendent and out-of-touch with the voting populace. He nails exactly why criticism of Wal-Mart is so repugnant to the people who shop there: the vast majority of people who criticize Wal-Mart do so precisely because they don't have to shop there. He also understands that the Left is an elite, whether it admits this or not, and pretending otherwise is going to look and sound just as phony as it is.
But as one goes through the article and reads a little more closely, it's apparent that while he does understand some of the above, he's still an unreconstructed culture-warrior who equates the American Right (which he consistently describes as an oligarchy) with the Soviet Politburo. This is quite an amusing and ahistorical connection, as it was the Right who spent 30 years fighting Communists and the Left that spent 30 years trying to get in bed with them.
But no matter. Bascially, Ames believes that the reason the Leftist project of the 60s and 70s failed is because "one side has the money, the industry, the lobbyists, the police, bean-bag guns, APC-mounted water cannons, stun guns, pepper spray, rubber bullets, a near-monopoly on mainstream media contacts and lots of psychologically-impressive expensive dark suits with stern ties. The other side has mountain bikes and the ability to create 10-foot tall papier-mache puppets." He doesn't stop to consider that maybe the Leftist project failed because it's inherently nonviable, hurting the people it's supposed to help. No, it just has to be fascist oppression and violence from the Man.
How quaint.
Basic axiom: cultural activism is no subsitute for politics. If the Left had spent money on actually winning an election or two instead of on reefer, maybe things would be different. Sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, and "raising awareness" do not a legislative majority make.
It's good to see that there are indeed some Leftists who appreciate the problems they face. But it's a little discouraging - if entirely unsurprising - to see them blame the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy instead of knuckling down and actually getting something done. The American people aren't buying that line. If you scroll to the end of that link, you'll see that while a majority of Americans surveyed disapprove of Bush's handling of the war (as do I, for what it's worth) even more disapprove of the Democrats' handling of the war and 71% said that they offer no clear alternatives.
It's that simple: don't condescend to the American people, and offer a clear direction. It doesn't take much.
Bad thunderstorm this evening. There was a lightning strike just outside my house, but it doesn't look like anything was hit.
Except for the power supply on my parents' computer. Fried that thing like an Oreo at a county fair.
Normally, this would be a bit annoying, but nothing all that terrible for me. I'd probably wind up fixing it, but I wouldn't normally feel compelled to immediately drive to the nearest parts dealer for a new PSU, praying to the silicon gods that please, please, keep the RAID intact and don't lose any data.
Why, you ask, did this compulsion come over me? Because just installed a new hard drive on my computer and was using my parents new RAID array as temporary storage for my 160GB of media. When things went down I had maybe half of it back, if that.
Fortunately, it seems as if I'm going to be able to get everything off. The only thing aside from the power supply that looks like it went is the NIC. Unfortunately, the NIC is integrated, so who knows what else on the mobo is gone. For the moment, it looks as if things are okay. So tomorrow, I pick up a NIC and we cross our fingers.
Got to love the family tech support.
To absolutely no one's surprise, it turns out that UN observer post destroyed by Israel a few days ago was probably being used by Hezbollah as a staging area from which to engage the IDF. Which explains why Israel - deliberately or not - wiped it off the map.
You don't want to get killed, you don't hang out in areas where terrorists are operating. You'll just be a casualty, and it'll be as much your fault as the terrorists'.
I think this is why a one-mile "buffer-zone" north of Israel is an entirely unsatisfactory solution. There's nothing to prevent Hezbollah from operating there anyway, but Israel will be criticized for fighting back. I'm increasingly in favor of Israeli occupation, provided Lebanon proves incapable of occupying the territory themselves.
Since when is 12 killed "heavy casualties"? Sounds like a minor skirmish operation. When I hear "heavy casualties" I expect to hear of hundreds or thousands dead. Not 12. But when you've got a significantly anti-Semitic media covering the story, I suppose you can't expect much better.
It never ceases to amaze me that the media and intelligentsia have already forgotten the basic fact about this conflit: Hezbollah started it. It was Hezbollah who invaded Israeli territory, killed and kidnapped its soldiers (I say "kidnapped" instead of "captured" because only a legitimate army can make a capture), and has been indiscriminately launching rockets at civilian targets. They're promising to strike deeper into Israel now.
The next time Nasrallah makes a live press statement, the Israelis need to quickly identify the source of the transmission and bomb the hell out of it. I'd say that taking down Hezbollah's leader on live TV would count for something. The message needs to be "No matter where you go, no matter where you hide, no matter what or whom you hide behind, what you're doing cannot be allowed, and you're a dead man."
Slate has a review of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. The reviewer points out, correctly in my opinion, that the concept of the "long tail" is valid as far as it goes: an inventory and content management model largely applicable to information economics. It works because the cost between hosting 10,000 songs and 1 million songs on iTunes is negligible, so even if you sell the less popular songs at a fraction the rate of the most popular ones, you still make more money.
He criticizes the author, Anderson, for attempting to expand a useful tool for e-businesses into a theory of life, the universe, and everything. It simply doesn't work, for reasons that you can read for yourself in the review.
I would suggest a reason why Anderson reaches beyond his grasp. It's the same reason the Democrats thought they were going to win in 2004: the Internet may be a bully echo-chamber, but it's not all that good of a pulpit. A small group of connected individuals can seem like a massive, popular movement, but in reality, its ability to penetrate the popular consciousness is rather limited, at least in ways that matter.
As evidence for this, let's look at the big movers an shakers in Internet businesses, those that seem to benefit most from the "long tail" idea. Google, Amazon, eBay, Netflix, Yahoo, and heck, let's throw in Microsoft for good measure. Together they represented a total of $69.32 billion dollars in revenue last year. That might seem like a hefty chunk of change until you consider the really big players in the economic game. ExxonMobil posted $370.6 billion in revenue. Wal-Mart $315.7 billion. Heck, even IBM, which deals in hardware far more than software, sold $91 billion worth of actual stuff.
The businesses profiting off of the "long tail" concept may be making good money, but it's small potatoes compared to the big dogs, boring as they may be. There's nothing sexy about selling billions and billions of items at $2.99 a pop, but you do wind up making a hell of a lot of money. Economies of scale and whatnot. So while media darlings like Google, Yahoo, Amazon etc. may receive a lot more attention than their staid, quiet counterparts in more traditional businesses, they are also a lot less influential. They count for less. If you tried to tell the CEO of ExxonMobil that his business model was outdated in our modern, information-based, 21st-century economy, I think he'd feel pretty justified in telling you to go stuff yourself.
AMD has just purchased ATI. I can see why this happened, but I don't like it. I'm a fan of AMD technologies, and I much prefer nVIDIA products to ATI products. nVIDIA also has a broader product line than ATI, and now makes motherboard controllers, RAID controllers, PCI-E controllers, etc. I'm a big fan of all of their stuff. I would rather AMD have purchased nVIDIA than ATI.
So now with AMD having purchased ATI, what's nVIDIA's relationship with the company going to be? If AMD was in the market for a video-processor manufacturer, ATI was indeed the logical financial choice: ATI is a smaller company in both revenue and market cap than nVIDIA, and ATI actually lost money last year, whereas nVIDIA turned a 13% profit. So nVIDIA wasn't exactly looking to be purchased. But I think an AMD/nVIDIA acquisition would have been much better for both of them than the AMD/ATI acquisition we've got now.
At the time of this writing, ATI shares are obviously up quite a bit, but nVIDIA shares have also taken a boost on speculation that someone - the obvious candidate being Intel - will start looking to acquire nVIDIA. Makes sense to me.
The Wall Street Journal has a feature article in today's Weekend edition (sorry, subscription only, so no-link-for-you) about the role of a anti-teen-pregnancy sex education program in South Carolina in dropping teen pregnancy rates there. An adjacent county without a similar program has also seen its teen pregnancy rates decline, but not as quickly as its neighbor, and still boasts one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state.
The article points out that teen pregnancy rates have fallen dramatically across the country starting in 1990. We're talking a 25% drop at minimum, across ethnic boundaries. The article suggests that a tighter job market, stricter child support laws, increased use of condoms and the injectable contraceptive Depro-Provera are responsible for this drop.
I, for one, ain't buying it. I would argue that while each of those may have some small role to play, the kind of person who screws around at 14-17 years old and can't manage to avoid getting pregnant isn't the kind of person who is likely to be affected by economic or legal concerns, let alone responsible enough to use contraception regularly.
No, I would argue that the decline in teen pregnancy is due to the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s.
"Ah, but wait, Ryan," you say, "We're talking about pregnancy rates here, not live-birth rates, so even if a girl has an abortion, that doesn't decrease the teen pregnancy rate." This is, of course, true. But it doesn't take into account that the kind of people who have abortions are largely poor, irresponsible (they got pregnant after all), etc. More to the point, they didn't want to have a baby. So the kind of children who are largely aborted are the ones who would have been born into low-income, troubled households with significantly underprivilaged parents, should the father even be in the picture. Sounds like a perfect candidate for teen motherhood if you ask me.
So just as an entire generation of criminals has been aborted, so an entire generation of teen mothers has as well. If the male output of pathological families are young criminals, the female output of pathological families would be young mothers.
Do you think the article mentioned abortion as a possible cause for the change? A better and more plausible question might be, "Is Hezbollah going to unilaterally disarm and return its hostages?" No, we couldn't have abortion being made out to be the ultimate racial profiler, now could we?
A judge in Virginia has awarded partial custody of a teenager to the relevant county and its social services department.
The reason? The child's parents were found neglectful in treating their son's Hodgkin's Disease. The disease, if treated, is curable about 85% of the time.
But Abraham Cherrix was unhappy with the side effects of treatment - nausea, weakness, your run-of-the-mill chemotherapy and radiation therapy complaints - so when his disease became active again, he refused to return to his oncologist and decided to go to an alternative medicine clinic in Mexico. They recommended a sugar-free, organic diet with herbal supplements.
Yeah, that's gonna do it. This is cancer we're talking about, buddy boy. Eating right doesn't count. So we have parents whose child has a largely curable disease choosing not to seek treatment. It'd be one thing if they were trying to get treated and couldn't afford it. No negligence there. But in declining to seek the proven treatment of a curable disease, they did, in fact, exhibit negligence.
Though I'm uncomfortable with the courts intervening in parents' decisions about their children's health care, I have to admit that in this case the judge and Social Service department have a point.
My contract with Verizon has been active long enough to qualify me for a new phone. So I got one of these, an LG-VX8300. The phone as such won't cost me a dime after I mail in the rebate, so that was cool. I dropped a little extra on a case, car charger, and Bluetooth headset. Not a bad deal, all in all.
As I was driving home, I was mulling over the annoying fact that I've now got two new and one extra electronic device that I've got to charge. I was annoyed by the fact that all of my devices - laptop, mp3, phone, headset, etc. - have incompatible power ports. So every time you replace or add one you've got a whole new set of cables to deal with, install, cart around, etc. Bleeding annoying.
Then I saw the power port on my Bluetooth headset. It looked suspiciously familiar. Sure enough, the power input on this is exactly the same as the data port on this. My headset is now happily charging from the USB cable I've got plugged into my computer.
I don't know if the power specs are exactly correct, but the little charging light went on, and I know USB connections can provide a decent amount of power, so... I'm going with it until I know it doesn't work.
Sweet.
Did you have to make the first ever exercise of your Constitutionally mandated veto-power for this? Why not any of the dozens of bloated spending bills that have come your way? Is this really what you want to go to bat for?
A Federal judge has overturned a Maryland law specificially designed to target Wal-Mart. I may be in favor of finding some way of shfiting the burden of health care more onto the service industry than the public sector, but I'm not in favor of laws crafted to single out a given company. The way the law was written, only Wal-Mart would have met the criteria for penalties, and lawmakers knew this when they wrote it.
If you want to make retailers and other low-wage employers pay for health care, there are ways of doing that, but going after a single, successful company simply because they are successful strikes me as spiteful and mean-spirited. Not to mention illegal.
The Iranian branch of Hezbollah is saying that they are prepared to "jeopardize US and Israeli interests worldwide."
"We are only waiting for the Supreme Leader's green light to take action. If America wants to ignite World War Three ... we welcome it," said the Iranian spokesman.
I'm down. It'd give us an excuse to rout out Iran like Draino in a clogged sink.
Some absolute genius is saying that if we get 600 million people to jump all at once, we can shift the Earth into a new orbital pattern. The alleged benefits are to "stop global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homogeneous climate."
Somebody obviously wasn't a math major. Turns out he's a German artist doing some kind of experiment in mass movements. Check out World Jump Day for more such tripe.
600 million people at an average of 70 kg/person weigh quite a bit. About, 42 billion kg (4.2x10^10). The Earth weighs 140 trillion times more than that, coming in at 6x10^24 kg (6 septillion kg).
You can do the math from there. I hope.
Defense analysists are saying that Israel is entirely capable of pulling of an aerial strike against Iran. They've already got 25 F-15I Ra'ams (long-range interdictors), and have already received delivery on 60 of 102 F-15I Sufa (long-range tacticals) they've ordered.
A little searching reveals Natanz, one of Iran's underground nuclear enrichment facilities. Go ahead, zoom in. Googlemaps has, for one reason or another, incredibly detailed imagery.
You can see, with a little looking, at least three entrances to the underground facilities. Notice the driveways that lead into little rectangular structures and just stop. They don't stop. They keep going underground. The large, narrow rectangular structure running NNE/SSW is another such entrance. Also note the two similar squarish building just to the left of the "cross" structure. Note the foundations on which they rest are significantly larger than the structures themselves. Another underground bunker.
Here's a link to the Global Security page with analysis and construction images I used as a source.
It's also apparent that the ghastly green color you see in many satellite images of Iran isn't the way it actually looks. Better resolution images reveal your normal dirt color.
Israel now has ground troops in Lebanese territory. They're rooting out the Hezbollah presence that keeps shelling Israeli territory.
Furthermore, as a concrete example of terrorist accomplishing its aims, leftists in Israel are rallying in protest against Israel's military activities. They're calling for negotiations with Hamas and Hezbollah and demanding an prisoner exchange.
This is why terrorists do what they do: because leftist, patchouli-wearing wackos surrender faster than France.
The IDF is saying that it wasn't a makeshift aircraft that struck its warship. It was an Iranian-made C802 missile. It was a second missile fired at the warship which missed that hit the Egyptian civilian vessel 60 miles away. The IDF isn't saying whether or not Iranian agents were involved in the firing of the missile, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter as much as it might.
But the more serious development is that Israel has given Syria an ultimatum: if Hezbollah isn't neutralized and the missing soldiers returned in 72-hours, Israel will "launch an offensive with disasterous consequences".
That's Tuesday morning, by my count.
First, Hezbollah has rocketed a civilian vessel in Lebanese waters. My question would be: what in blazes was any civilian craft doing in the middle of a war zone? Unless they were actively trying to escape Lebanon, that has to go near the top of the list of absolutely brilliant tactical manuvers.
Second, our favorite Latin American enfant terrible is saying that US support of Israel's assault on Lebanon will lead to a "holocaust". My hope would be that any of the leftist moonbats who tend to support him would take this as a bit of a wake-up call. But I'm not that hopeful, as the left tends far more towards anti-Semitism in particular and racism in general than anyone else these days.
Take a look at this. It's a satellite view of most of Israel via GoogleMaps. Look at the satellite image, then click "hybrid" to see an overlay with borders.
You can tell where Israel is without the political boundaries, most of the time. It's the part that's green and fertile, whereas Arab areas - both within Israel and other nations - tend to be pretty barren looking. Both the West Bank, Gaza, and the border with Lebanon are clearly visible.
And though I am increasingly coming to think of Islam as a blight on the face of the planet, I wasn't aware that it could look like that so literally. Take a look at Iran.
Here's a good shot of runaway erosion. I don't know if there was a strip mine in the area or what, but those ridges are huge.
Given the fact that it's not any kind of foilage, I can only conclude that what you see here is copper ore that has somehow leached onto the surface. It's got that distinctive metallic green color, but I am entirely open to alternate interpretations here.
Here's what appears to be a massive salt lake of some kind. Note the massive erosive washes feeding into it. Those are several miles long. Also note the tiny green squares to the southwest. That's people. It's also the first evidence of any kind of agriculture so far.
Here's a zoomed out view of most of the country. Almost entirely barren. And there are almost 69 million people living there.
I suppose this is what 6000 years of constant human habitation can do to a place. I think global warming is a crock of donkey excrement, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in climate change as such. Compare the previous image with this one. Note the equivalent zoom. Note that the latter is almost entirely green. But unlike the map of Iran, if you zoom in on one of the brown areas, instead of blasted wasteland with erosion wadis dozens of miles long, you find roads and houses and, well, civilization. It looks to me as if close to 100% of the agriculture in Iran is irrigated.
This shot is from Nevada. Similar erosion and color patterns: still looks like copper to me. But note two things: it's zoomed farther in than in Iran, so those wadis are only a mile long, if that. Also note that even in Nevada you can still see trees. So basically Iran is the geographical equivalent of a less prosperous, drier Nevada, only six times as big. And without Vegas. Oh, and you can't drive a few hours and be in LA either. Sounds like an absolute blast.
This sounds like a really fun place to have a war. At least Iraq has some parts that are flat, green, or both. It's no wonder these people are in such a bad mood all the time. I would be if I lived someplace like that. Compared to there, anywhere east of the Mississippi really is paradise.
Hezbollah has crashed an apparently unmanned aircraft into an Israeli warship. The warship is, at the time of posting, still on fire, several hours after being hit. Casualties have not been confirmed by the Israeli Navy, but there are reports of a search for four missing sailors.
Not gonna help, guys.
Instead of blowing up civilized people, Islamic fascists have done something more productive, and taken some time out to blow up each other. A suicide bomber has blown up a prominant Pakistani Shi'ite cleric.
Infuriated youths then set fire to a gas station.
You just can't make stuff like this up.
Israel has destroyed the Hezbollah headquarters in Lebanon.
Israel states that their invasion of Lebanon will continue until such time as Hezbollah disarms, as required by a 2004 UN resolution (scroll down a ways). Syria and Iran, meanwhile, are rattling their respective sabres.
One wonders exactly what kind of response can be mustered here, seeing as Iran has no border with Israel, has a minimal air force at best (which wouldn't last twenty minutes against the IAF, let alone the USAF, through which it would have to go to get to Israel). I would love to see Iran go after Israel. Just love it. It's like watching a punk kid mess with a hornets' nest. You just know it's gonna end badly, and just hope it does while you're watching.
It's worth adding that this is a nuclear capable hornets' nest... and I wonder just how badly you'd have to piss off the Israelis before they get sick of it and nuke, say, this.
Northop is plugging a system designed to protect planes around airports from projectiles of all kinds. Missiles, rockets, mortar rounds, cruise missiles, etc. It would use a system of lasers which could target and destroy any incoming ordinance.
Why not simply deploy the system over all of Israel? That'd certainly take are of the stupid home-made rockets Hamas keeps firing across the border.
There's a lot of talk these days about how the current economic expansion isn't helping average Americans. I think this is less true than it's frequently made out to be, but having spent a year looking for and working low-end-ish jobs, I have to say I understand the reasons for the argument. TCS has an article suggesting that the reason GDP is rising but real wages aren't is because the growth is largely a growth in productivity, and that the growth in productivity is large enough to preclude a growth in demand for labor.
There's probably something to this. As companies figure out how to implement the efficiencies made possible by networked computers, they will be able to make more money with fewer employees. That makes sense to me.
But I think the article misses something.
I think the real reason "Joe Six-Pack" isn't seeing a rise in his wages is that though there are certain players in the economy who are becoming significantly more productive, he himself can't do any more than he could five years ago. The bottom end of the labor market - which probably includes half of the people in the labor market - isn't simply stagnant in terms of job skills, I'd argue that it's actually getting worse. The public school system is turning out worse and worse graduates every year, even among college-bound students (their grades may be good, but their general level of adult competency is woefully inadequate). Cleaning toilets and changing sheets haven't suddenly become more valuable just because companies have figured out ways of eliminating inefficiencies from their management and distribution operations.
The reason the average American isn't benefiting as much as well-educated, highly skilled American is because the average American brings nothing to the table. The same productivity boost which is helping your lawyers, engineers, executives, and etc. is hurting anyone who can't keep up. And most of America can't keep up. It's largely their fault too. Not wanting to work but wanting to get paid will not put food on your table. Not having the self-discipline to stay in school and learn how to do something for which people are willing to pay is not going to land you a job paying north of $30k a year.
A huge problem for our economy in the next fifty years is figuring out how to employ those who can't produce very much.
GoogleMaps has just done an update of their UI. Changes I've noted so far:
- The search bar now has tabs for searching for locations, businesses, and directions, so you don't wind up getting a bunch of business hits when you were looking for an address.
- You can now zoom in and out with the mouse wheel.
- Load times are much faster.
Cool.
I think it's a question worth asking. I mean, if I were facing a $357 million fine for doing business there, I'd seriously consider cutting my losses and giving them the finger. You don't want to have to deal with normal competition? Fine. Make your own damn OS.
In one sense, Microsoft can afford it. They generated $12 billion in profit last year, so it's not like they're hurting for cash. But $357 million is pretty steep. It's downright extortion if you ask me. And it's not as if Microsoft faces serious competition in Europe anyway: what are they going to use, Linux? Sure, that'll fly. You be the one to tell 30 million European grandmothers that just as they've finally figured out the whole email thing, they have to switch operating systems. Looking forward to some of that.
It's long past time the EU stopped playing regulatory racketeering.
...if I thought it mattered. Viewership of broadcast evening news programs is plummeting. We're talking a 20% falloff in six months.
A combined 21 million people watched the three "big" evening news programs: ABC, NBC, CBS. By way of contrast, that many people watched FoxNews at 8pm on July 10.
Conclusion? Broadcast news is no longer relevant. It doesn't matter if they continue to skew left: no one cares. The first link has a good explanation of why this might be: in essence, the evening news has become such a small segment of networks overall newsroom that it has stopped mattering to both the "journalists" and their superiors whether or not anyone actually watches the show and whether or not the show is actually profitable. Ergo, the agendas of the "journalists" involved increasingly outweighs reporting actual news. Ergo, people stop caring and stop watching.
Rathergate was kind of an example of this. Rather running the piece on 60 Minutes was intended to detonate the Bush campaign. But CBS doesn't have the reach that it once did. But when it turned out that the documents had been faked, CBS became a huge target. They stood to lose a lot more than they stood to gain.
Not wanting to get behind the Palestinians in Gaza, Hezbollah has gone and captured two Israeli soldiers from the northern border.
This is not cool for two reasons:
1) Israel is already dealing with one kidnapping, and a second is not likely to foster goodwill and patience amongst the Israeli people, who do have a reputation for kicking a** and taking names. "Six Days, biotch!"
2) Lebanon, the government of which Hezbollah is part, is a sovereign state, unlike Palestine, which is basically a glorified refugee camp. There's really someone to hold accountable this time. I give the situation 36 hours before the sixth full-fledged Arab-Israeli war gets started. Personally, I'll give double-or-nothing on the Israelis.
Time to bust out the popcorn. Nothing beats watching Islamofascists get their butts kicked.
CNN Money is running a feature on the end of the usefulness of Jack Welch's widely publicized rules for business.
The criticism of the rules certainly bespeaks a 21st century, thoroughly postmodern mindset, but I think they're right for the wrong reasons.
Welch is right: you want to be big. You want to be #1 or #2 in your business. You want to be lean and mean. You want to be powerful.
But as American culture is increasingly emasculated and feminized, a more "sensitive" perspective comes forth in the critiques. Be agile, not big. Be a niche player, not #1 or #2. Be sensitive and socially-conscious, not a power-player.
In terms of launching, maintaining, and growing the kind of multi-billion dollar corporations that a society as large and complex as ours needs to survive (as attractive as the idea may be, America could not survive for a week without multi-national agricultural, transportation, and retail corps), these new rules are bullshit. But they're decent advice for someone trying to make a break into a world in which the #1 and #2 spots are filled, have been filled for a while, and will continue to be filled by the same people/groups/corporations for the forseeable future.
This is also good advice for a maturing capitalist system. Most of the people with disposable income are pretty well-served by existing corporations. New markets are hard to come by, and most of them don't have much money. New products periodically hit the market, but there aren't many blockbusters like the PC or the iPod or cell phones to be had anymore. Western capitalism seems to be transitioning from a growth phase - from industrial to information - into a maintenence and stabilization phase. The information economy is here to stay, and it's pretty well established, and though there obviously isn't any way of predicting this, it seems to be as if most of the "really big" innovations in e-business are pretty much in place. The implementation of those innovations will take some time and make a lot of people a lot of money, but doesn't generally involve something new and different.
Trying to muscle your way into a tightly competetive marketplace in which most of the advantageous positions have been occupied by the same people for 20-50 years doesn't sound like a great idea. But nimbly moving around the big players, filling niche markets with socially-conscious, customer-sensitive products and marketing seems like a pretty good way to go. You probably aren't going to become a multi-billion dollar bedrock-of-society corporation (the revenues of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Wal-Mart, and GE alone are almost 10% of GDP, compare to Google's 0.05%) but you may make decent money along the way (Google's market cap is almost as big as Chevron's). It's a good way of growing out, not up.
The old rules are still in play for the big dogs, and the big dogs still do own the street. But smaller beasts are starting to explore the side alleys, and the rules there may be a little different.
I don't know why. But someone has linked to my site on some Spanish wiki as an example of a comp sci joke.
Weird.
I think it's pretty safe to say that the PCUSA no longer counts as a significantly Christian denominiation. Why? Well, read here.
"Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" is the way Christians refer to the Trinity. We've used those words and meant those words for two thousand years. If you want to be part of the Christian tradition, that's what you say.
You don't say "compassionate mother, beloved child, and life-giving womb". You just don't say that. That s**t's not regulation.
You also don't have your "Advocacy Committee on Racial Ethnic Concerns" lobby against a resolution declaring suicide bombing a crime against humanity. That's just not cool.
I used to think that it was the ECUSA that was leading the charge against orthodox Christian tradition. Turns out that they're just making up for lost time as the PCUSA is way out in front.
On second thought, scratch that. The Palestinian Prime Minister is publicly asserting that Israel's response to the kidnapping is proof of a premeditated plan to bring down the Hamas-led government.
Say what?
You're telling me that Israel planned to have one of their soldiers kidnapped so they could attack the Gaza strip, a piece of territory they recently evacuated?
That's some kool-aid I don't think I can drink.
Hamas party leaders are also saying that Israel isn't serious about negotiating the release of their soldier and is merely buying time until they can find and free him through intelligence and military methods.
No kidding.
If you've been following the news lately, you'll have notice that the Palestinians have taken an Israeli soldier hostage.
Brilliant move, guys.
Israel has responded with a massive invasion of the Gaza strip, and is currently preparing a second. And now they've said that unless the soldier is released unharmed, they're going to assassinate the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismael Haniyeh, a member of Hamas. They've already arrested a number of Hamas MPs. If this keeps up, there's going to need to be new elections: it's hard to run a government when half of its members are in jail, you know?
But maybe this'll teach the Palestinian people something: voting for Hamas might not have been the smartest thing to do, and it certainly isn't bringing peace and stability, let alone freedom. Israel was already engaged in unilateral pullbacks before the election, and seemed to be willing to work with what government there was. Now it looks as if war is right around the corner. As far as I can tell, this is the first time that a sovereign democratic state has specifically threatened another democratically elected head of state. Whatever else the Israelis may be, they aren't fooling around.