But those who think this is a done deal don't know Iraq.

War of Ideas, Part 3

But something equally important has happened in South Asia over the past 15 years. India has been transformed by a market revolution.

Fareed Zakaria sees opportunity in recent regional economic and political developments.

So, when the IBM engineers lose their jobs to the Indians, they might be saddened, but at least they should sleep well -- they're fighting terrorism!

Wealth, or safety? Choose wisely.

Opening in South Asia

Since you are so bright, you probably have at least two you can articulate. Send me two laws based on your empirical work and observations you would not mind having tagged with your name. Stick to science and to those scientific areas where you have expertise. Avoid flippancy. Remember, your name will be attached to your law.

There are a number of really insightful "laws" here. Although, this does not contain "Decius's Law":

Given a set of similar products, the one which is least technologically sophisticated will be the most successful in the marketplace.

I can't think of anything to top that right now.

What's Your Law?

] Tens of thousands of people calling for democratic reform
] in Hong Kong marched through the city on New Year's Day
] in scenes reminiscent of the July 1 protest when half a
] million people poured onto the streets.
]
] Chanting 'we want democracy - one man one vote",
] protestors wound through busy shopping districts,
] starting in Causeway Bay and ending nearly three
] kilometres later at the main government offices in
] Central.

Here are some choice photos:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040101/481/xvy10801010854
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040101/481/xvy10901010952
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040101/481/xvy10201010818

FT.com | More Hong Kong Democracy Demonstrations

Here is a direct link to the recent Gallup results on American opinions about the Iraq war. What you think of those opinions probably has a lot to do with how closely they resemble your opinions. The exception is the one Ryan pointed out... Do you think Sadam was involved with the 911 attacks? He wasn't and this is a simple factual measure of how confused you are about what is going on.

The rate is as high now as it has ever been. A slight decrease in the number occurred in September when Bush said he wasn't involved, but now its right back up again, proving that the only thing worse then our grasp of the facts is our attention span.

Campaign finance reform attacks the symptom and not the disease. We don't need campaign finance reform, we need voter clue reform. As long as so many people remain completely incapable of independent thought they will always be the victims of big marketing budgets.

Gallup Poll Analyses - Americans are clueless

"Dark Outlook Encourages Resistance: Underground War Is Believed Likely If We Fail in Our Major Purposes

Elonka wrote:
I love this site ... news articles from post World War II, during the occupation of Germany.

Those who do not study history, are doomed to repeat it ...

The CounterRevolutionary

] Reuven Cohen of Bar-Ilan University in Israel and his
] colleagues propose a simple modification of random
] vaccination that is more effective, according to their
] computer simulations. The idea is to randomly choose,
] say, 20% of the individuals and ask them to name one
] acquaintance; then vaccinate those acquaintances.
] Potential super-spreaders have such a large number of
] acquaintances that they are very likely to be named at
] least once, the researchers found. On the other hand, the
] super-spreaders are so few in number that the random 20%
] of individuals is unlikely to include many of them.

Vaccinate Thy Neighbor

] There may well be some sort of subversive cultural
] exchange program going on here. The North is pretending
] it's Southern, as the South completes its metamorphosis
] into a wacky funhouse version of the Old North. But you
] have to wonder whether we're getting the best of the
] bargain.

Being Jersey Yankee who lived in Tennessee, and now resides in San Francisco, this article amused the hell out of me.

The Old North

Apparently Vivendi plans to destroy (yes, destroy) all the data having to do with MP3.com now that they have sold the domain to Cnet.

Thats more then 1 million songs from over 250,000 artists. Here is where it gets evil:

] Many web sites cease operation but can still be found,
] captured for posterity, in the brilliant online library
] known as Archive.org, also called the "wayback machine."
] Here, massive servers and storage captures run by the
] visionary (and my personal friend) Brewster Kahle
] periodically take snapshots of the Internet as a means of
] recording history. Future generations can then look back
] at the evolution of the Net, of thought, trends, digital
] media and much more. It's a modern-day Smithsonian and
] Library of Congress, all in one. Unfortunately, Vivendi
] has not given Archive.org permission to capture the
] MP3.com site.
]
] My hope is that by writing this essay, others will see
] that we're about to lose a museum filled with digital
] antiquities that are every bit as meaningful as their
] physical counterparts filling today's museums. There is a
] glimmer of hope that those in charge at VU will grant
] permission to Archive.org to make a copy of the band
] pages, music and stations before they dissolve. Perhaps
] the new owners, Cnet, have rights over the content and
] can allow Archive.org to take a snapshot? I hope one of
] these things happens, otherwise we'll lose a major
] digital museum with no way to ever recover it, and the
] world will be a less musical place.

What can be said about this? Its just wrong.. It makes me angry as hell. The willful destruction of that much art is a crime against our culture. If Vivendi goes through with this, and destroys this without letting archive.org make a copy, it should not be forgotten. This better be their way of hanging a for-sale sign on the data..

If they don't want it in the market, fine.. Give it to the Internet Archive under terms that they will not make it publicly available for 20 years or something like that. I'm sure they would do that. Just don't destroy all that art!

Some snooping around Google News turned up a mention to Primetones.com was trying to make an offer to by the music collection from Vivendi. [update: Apple?] That would be fine.. But at the very least, they must allow archive.org to make a copy of this before destroying it.

I can't stress enough. This is one of those things that isn't a crime, but it might at well be. They own it, and they can destroy it if they want to, but its just wrong. Its the virtual equivalent of burning a million books in front of librarians begging for them. Evil.

A big fuss should be made over this. This should not be an acceptable thing to do in our society. If this doesn't piss people off, and they do not make efforts to stop this kind of thing from happening, our society is going to have a serious problem preserving itself.

Mike Robertson on MP3.com

] The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble.
] The dominant position the United States occupies in the
] world is the element of reality that is being distorted.
] The proposition that the United States will be better off
] if it uses its position to impose its values and
] interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly
] by not abusing its power that America attained its
] current position.

] Where are we in this boom-bust process? The deteriorating
] situation in Iraq is either the moment of truth or a test
] that, if it is successfully overcome, will only reinforce
] the trend.

This piece by George Soros really hits the nail on the head.

It appears that the Bush administration is doing exactly the opposite of everything I believe makes an entity a leader in a network.. That is if you consider sovereign states to be nodes in a network, their links things such as the trade (of both goods and ideas). George Soros shares that view, (economics in general share that view) and expresses it way more eloquently then anyone else I have read or seen recently, including our current crop of presidential candidates. (I fully agree with both Decius and Jeremy on that point. The current candidates are doing a really lousy job of saying why the Bush Administration sucks, in a high level way. At this point, none of them has yet won my support.)

He makes a good argument that seeking American supremacy via unilateral action as a primary piece of our security and foreign policy strategy, isn't going to get us supremacy. Not abusing our position of power has given us supremacy. Not being secretive has what has given us supremacy. Being an open society has been what has given us supremacy. Et cetra. This is a call from Soros to not flush these elements of our society and government down the toilet, and break the bubble before it breaks us.

However reasonable this may be, the neocons are sure attack this stance, and they will have an easy job doing so. The obvious troll to this is "you think america should be weak!" and "you appeaser you!".. All things that will work very well in that Bill O'Reilly kinda context where its all about being strong and right.

We may be uncovering another one of the 42 great true lies.

The Bubble of American Supremacy