As promised, the Ecosystem has

As promised, the Ecosystem has been updated. Changes this week include:

– About 40 new blogs have been added, bringing the total tracked up to around 250

– Added indicators on the Ecosystem list to track each blog’s change in ranking from last week

I still have not tracked down the problem where some blogs do not appear to get scanned correctly for links, so you will still see some listed with 0 outbound links that should have some; sorry. Anyone willing to debug this problem (on their own blog or others) is encouraged to do so; I’d be happy to have some help. And on a more general note: if you believe your blog is listed incorrectly, please feel free to contact me and complain, but please: do as much investigation and debugging on your own as possible, and provide me with as specific information as you can about what links you think are being missed. And please do not send me mail unless you’ve read my posts about exactly how the system works and are comfortable you understand it.

If your blog is not listed here, please don’t take offense: I am now basically only adding blogs that folks explicitly request to be added. So if there’s anybody that I’ve linked to within my blog who expected to get added but didn’t; sorry. I’ll hopefully be implementing a more automated system for requesting to be added when we make the move to the new domain, which will reduce headaches for all involved. (Bottom line: if you aren’t listed and want to be, me an email, and to make my life really easy, use the subject line “ADD TO ECOSYSTEM”.)

And finally, the Hall of Link Sluttage remains named as such — for now. If you have an opinion on whether it should stay that way, then go vote on the poll in the left nav bar — the next update will probably include the final decision to keep the name or find a new one.

Enjoy, folks!

Why we will win: a

Why we will win: a brief recap

We will win because:

Their women in oppression and fear. Our women are free and joyous.

This is what they think a football stadium is for. This is what we think a football stadium is for.

Their society produces no weapons that can possibly harm us. They are reduced to stealing our own tools to use against us.

They believe all wisdom comes from a single book, and pleasure is weakness. We have a national anthem based on a song about drinking and sex.

Our civilians defeated their trained killers in 109 minutes.

They said they would “teach us a lesson“. They were the ones who got schooled.

Bruce Hill and Prof. Reynolds say that we need not hate our enemies in this war.

Indeed, we should pity them.

In case your wondering, no,

In case your wondering, no, I haven’t forgotten about the Blogosphere Ecosystem. Expect an update over the weekend, at the latest.

And while we’re on the subject of upcoming updates: The Truth Laid Bear will be moving to its own domain name, and off of Blogspot, sometime over the next week or so. The move will also include a complete site redesign, which hopefully will spiff up the look of things around here a bit. So for those of you who have (kindly) put permament links to me on your pages, consider this a “heads up” that a move is in the works…

Next Stop: Alpha Centauri

Next Stop: Alpha Centauri
ICAN-II Spacecraft Design
This from Prof R on a potential (real) warp drive reminded me of a subject I’ve been meaning to post on for a while: anti-matter !

Yeah, I’m the kinda guy who thinks things like “I really should post about anti-matter soon.” Learn to live with it; otherwise hey, the back button’s right at the top of the screen, buddy.

There’s an occupational hazard of being a devout science-fiction reader. Which is that in your mind, you build up a collection of technologies and milestones which exist in a a grey area where you have to stop and think: “Is that real yet? Or did I just read that in Baxter’s latest?”

The problem is worse if you focus on writers who actually do good science (see the Creative Dream Team if you’re looking for a list). Growing up on Heinlein, I continually had to remind myself that no, we don’t have rejuvination treatments for life extension yet, and no, there is not a former prison colony called Luna City on the moon.

Anyway, to get to the point: anti-matter has been floating in that bucket in my mind for years. But recently, doing some research, I stumbled across the fact that not only is anti-matter real (which I knew); not only has it actually been produced (which I suspected), but folks have actually got legitimate designs for spacecraft to be driven by it (which I had no idea).

The good folks at the Antimatter Space Propulsion group at Penn State University have developed designs for not one, but two different potential antimatter propulsion drives.

The first method is known as antiproton-catalyzed microfission/fusion (ACMF), uses very very very tiny amounts of antimatter to generate energy sufficient to trigger a fission reaction. This minimizes the amount of actual antimatter required as fuel — which is the major problem with any of these concepts, as our capacity to generate antimatter is very limited — and will be for some time. The Penn State team has designed not just the drive, but a spacecraft to use it, dubbed ICAN-II. It is shown in the top-right picture above, and the full description can be found in this PDF file.
AIMSTAR Design
So what could you do with ICAN-II? How about a manned mission to Mars? ICAN-II would allow a mission to be be launched in a window that occurs every two years for a 90-day round trip to Mars, with a 30-day stay at the planet itself. Feel like a longer drive? Try Jupiter: ICAN-II will get you there and back in eighteen months, and give you 90 days to enjoy the sites while you’re there. Really need to get away from it all? Pluto is a mere three year (one-way) trip away.

All that’s fine and good, but only weenies just want to stay within our own Solar System. (“The meek shall inherit the Earth… the rest of us are going to the stars.”) And sadly, even ICAN-II doesn’t provide a powerful enough drive to get you to anywhere worth going outside our system before you’re, well, dead.

But no worries: the Penn State folks have got it covered. First, enter AIMstar, a spacecraft based on Antiproton Initiated Microfission/fusion (AIM). This design uses antimatter to spark a fusion reaction, generating a larger specific impulse and enabling longer voyages. It’s not all good news, though: AIMstar is designed as an unmanned craft, and will still take 50 years to get to the Oort cloud (at 10,000 AU).

Future designs, though, could bring Alpha Centauri into reach for manned missions. “Plasma Core” and “Beamed Core” drive designs — which come closer to the direct “antimatter+matter = large boom” design of science fiction, make starships capable of reaching up to 40% of the speed of light feasible — enabling a trip to Alpha Centauri in a long-but-feasible 10 years.

The problem, though, is that beamed core engines require huge amounts of anti-matter: well beyond our production capabilities for at least the next few decades, unless an unforseen breakthrough occurs. The Penn State team provides a throrough review of our (and by our, I mean the planet Earth) anti-matter production capabilities for the near future, which assesses not just the raw mass being produced, but the actual cost (real dollars!) to do so. It also includes a very very spiffy graph, which I reproduce as the final image here, which shows exactly how much antimatter mass is required for various voyages using the different propulsion methods being discussed.
Propulsion Concepts
One final thought, which is somewhat of a downer: antimatter is, without exaggeration, the most dangerous substance ever created by man. I think that’s a truism, when you consider that the energy released by a antimatter-matter reaction is near total. And given our current climate of concern around securing nuclear and biological materials… I think you see where I’m going.

The good news is, the quantities of antimatter being produced today are, to my understanding, nowhere near anything that could be used as a weapon. But eventually, they will be. And antimatter weapons come with a particularly nasty attribute: if there’s a nuclear missile coming at you, you can shoot it down with conventional weapons and feel reasonably assured that there won’t be a nuclear reaction.

Not so with antimatter warheads. ‘Cause if you destroy the containment system keeping the antimatter in place with that conventional warhead, there’s going to be a reaction — whether it reacts with the material in the warhead designed for that purpose, or with the ground as it crashes down after your takedown.

Anyway, sorry to end on a depressing note, but we will have to think about a way to produce this stuff without it being an easy target for nutcases, sooner or later.

Trans-orbital antimatter production facilities, anyone?

Final Note: The work done at Penn State has now apparently been taken up by a commercial entity; a company called Positronics Research. The initial website I provided as the first link to the Penn State team’s above is a sub-page of Positronic’s site; however, if you wish to see the actual Penn State page (which appears to be orphaned and no longer being updated) you can view it here.

Final disclaimer: I am not a spaceflight expert by any means, and I have not fact-checked the sources above in any real way. They could, I suppose, be complete nonsense, but I’m assuming that Penn State keeps at least a slight eye on what their professors publish. And it is also worth noting that money has become involved here with the introduction of Positronics Research: which on the one hand suggests that somebody thinks these ideas are credible enough to spend money on, but on the other hand should lead us to consider the information with the skepticism that we view any presentation by someone with a commercial interest at stake. I would, therefore, welcome any pointers to additional info and/or opposing viewpoints on the feasability of the Penn State team’s work, or any other research in this field.

Essay Question (25 points)Select

Essay Question (25 points)

Select one (and only one) of the following and defend the position in an essay of no more than 1,000 words:

1) The American Catholic Church stands on the verge of a full-fledged rift with the Vatican, as American Bishops move towards policies that are more open and inclusive of the laity, while the Vatican hierarchy stands firm on the top-down command-and-control structures of the past centuries. Provide specific policy examples, and compare the current crisis with past upheavals in the Church. Extra credit: Outline the conditions that could lead to an American Reformation, in which the Church in the United States fully and completely splits from the Vatican hierarchy, and assess whether such a split would be a positive or negative development for Christianity worldwide.

or

2) The crisis gripping the Catholic Church will not result in significant reforms, to the detriment of the Church’s hold on its American faithful. Catholicism will wane as a significant power in American spiritual life; membership will plummet as formerly devout Catholics drift away from a Church they no longer trust. The financial base of the Catholicism in the United States will crumble, forcing a significant retreat for the Church, which will be compelled to significantly scale back social programs and other spending both in the United States and worldwide, resulting in a smaller, less worldly institution focused inward on itself.

or

3) A third way will be found, in which satisfactory reforms will be implemented which restore American Catholics faith in the institution of the Church, while simultaneously remaining within the bounds set by the Vatican hierarchy. Describe in detail the steps that must be taken by the American Bishops, the concerned laity in the United States, and the Vatican for such a solution to come to pass, and why you believe such an outcome is feasible. Students successfully addressing this position will likely be asked to follow up with a precise six-week plan to achieve full and lasting peace in the Middle East.

Submit all essays your section lead; exceptional responses will be shared with the class.

And remember: spelling counts.

Blatant Anti-Bear Propoganda

Blatant Anti-Bear Propoganda

I am shocked — shocked! — at the speciesism on display at the WaPo. Observe columnist Kagan’s otherwise thoughtful analysis of U.S. – Europe differences on how to attack terrorism:

Because of the disparity of power, Americans and Europeans even view threats differently. A person armed only with a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger — trying to kill the bear is riskier than lying low and hoping the bear never attacks. But a person with a rifle will likely make a different calculation: Why should he risk being mauled to death if he doesn’t need to?

Excuse me! What is with this killing of bears? Somebody’s getting a terse letter, I’ll tell you.

On a less disturbing note: I’m just not sure I buy this whole Europe-and-America-are-parting ways argument. Yes, Europeans and Americans are viewing the current crisis differently, and Kagan provides good reasons for why this may be so.

But my instinct, at least, is that this is less a fundamental shift than a perceived difference in circumstances.

Europe does not view itself to be directly under threat from the current war. If you doubt this, consider that even now, America is having difficulty remembering that we are under threat. When (fate forbid) a European city loses a few city blocks and a few thousand citizens, and al Qaeda (or some other group) declares the French to be their sworn enemy, the European tune will change. American unilateralism — otherwise known as “could you please come fix our mess again?” — will once again be back in vogue.

And I suspect that underneath it all, there is a current of relief in Europe that America is there to do the nasty things than Europe can’t get its consensual ass together to do itself.

So will we see the support we want from our European allies? Probably not in the ways we truly want, not anytime soon. Will they actively stand in our way? Also probably not.

So the rational approach is to keep doing what we’re doing: charting the course that we think best serves the interest of the United States, and best serves the interest of the world as a whole. Europe will drag its feet at times, but when the chips are truly down, they will come around. And the best way to make that happen is to ensure that our policies are not just self-serving realpolitik, but are genuinely geared at improving the safety and security of the planet. Simply because a policy is blessed by a consensus of gnomes in Brussels or Geneva doesn’t make it moral or just; nor is a policy conceived by a single nation by definition immoral.

If we use the power we have simply to advance U.S. hegemony, then Europe will leave us to struggle alone. But if we choose to lead the fight to defend the security and liberty of the world — Europe will follow. If not the gnomes of Brussels, than the men and women who they claim to serve. My faith in the European elites is slight: but my faith in the people of Europe is strong. If we show them that we’re serious, and that we’re interested in more than our own petty gains, they’ll come on board. Because they know the right side of this fight, even if their bureaucrats don’t.

Wheaton Ass-Kicking Update: The Truth

Wheaton Ass-Kicking Update:

The Truth Laid Bear: Up to on the user rating

WILL WHEATON DOT NET: Holding steady at 4.0382695507488

So Wheaton thinks he’s better than me, huh? Well the numbers say he’s only 0.720087732567 better. And not for long.

Wesley, can you come stand on this transporter pad for a sec? I want to try something…

A brief post from David

A brief from David Janes, which I quote in its entirety:

Sweden is modifying its constitution to ban criticism of homosexuality and alternate lifestyles. How if your alternative lifestyle is based on criticizing homosexuality? More seriously, isn’t the point of freedom of speech to be able to adopt and advocate positions that the majority disagrees with?

Yeah. It’s amazing how many people (and legislators) in supposedly enlightened democracies really don’t get that concept.

Jay Manifold thinks small is

Jay Manifold thinks small is beautiful. Or at least, short is.

The topic du jour is about rebuilding the WTC, which from a safe distance of 1200 miles, I … still oppose. The density of central cities is an artifact of an earlier time, where the value of information combined with limited bandwidth and personal transportation to require close physical proximity … I have seen the future, and it’s about 50 feet high.

Well, sure, out there in the cornfields of Kansas City it’s easy to say that. But I would point out that Manhattan is an island. There ain’t no more space to build any direction but up there… and hasn’t been for some time. And so for some patches of civilization, I think you’re going to have those big buildings… not necessarily out of architectural hubris, but out of simple geometry…

Thanks to those who cast

Thanks to those who some votes over at The Weblog Review. I’m #4 on the “Readers’ Top 5” list, and am now up to a reader rating of 3.1428571428571.
Approximately.

New goal: Kick that punk Wil Wheaton‘s ass. He’s got a reader rating of 4.0434056761269. Approximately.

And he’s all that stands between me and that #3 slot.

C’mere, Wil. I’ve got this nice red shirt I’d like to lend you…

A new look for The

A new look for The Truth Laid Bear

Finally — A logo submission !

To the left, you will behold the new TTLB logo, submitted by a self-described “huge fan of my stuff”. Cower in fear of its aesthetic beauty, foolish mortals ! You are not worthy !

Heather Havrilesky is a strange

Heather Havrilesky a strange lady. She’s also very tired.

Heather on manic episodes: “The Manic Episode is our friend. We need it to function. Without it, how would we alienate our friends and relatives, or do the laundry in a timely fashion?”

Heather on the Good Things In Life: “Well, there’s pizza with extra garlic. There’s great sex and even better sex. There are places in Palm Springs where they bring you cold beers to reward you for tanning so evenly.”

Heather on her plans for children: “I’d prefer to have kids who grow up wretchedly poor in some foul, twisted city.”

Go ahead. Click it. You know you’re curious. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Shameless plea for validationOkay, I’ll

Shameless plea for validation

Okay, I’ll admit it. I paid $5 to Weblog Review for them to get off their butts and get around to reviewing my site. I’m a narcissist, and I was curious what they’d have to say.

Well, turns out they said nice things, rating TTLB at 4.5 out of 5. Which is great.

But then, some meanies decided to cast their own votes on the site, and they don’t seem to like this bear much at all. My average “user” vote is 2.5, with only two votes cast. And that… well, that just hurts my feelings. Sniff.

So if only to stroke my pathetic ego: go vote! Unless of course you think I suck, in which case: don’t !

I think you have to register, but it’s free and relatively painless, so it’s a small price for you to pay for… well, for me.

Brian Finch has a column

Brian Finch has column today over at TechCentralStation which InstaGuy advises us to read, so never to be one to turn down He From Whom All Traffic Flows, I did.

It’s a good piece, and reminds us of the paradigm shift the September 11th attacks forced on our ideas about aircraft hijackings and how they obliterated the “old” approach to dealing with terrorists in flight. Finch calls this “The Delta Force Paradigm”, and describes it as “stay calm, listen to what the hijackers say and wait until the plane gets on the ground so the military or police can come and rescue everyone.”

On September 11th that, of course, didn’t happen, and now we know that there is something worse than the terrorists destroying the plane and killing everyone on board. And we’re adjusting our approaches to countering them accordingly.

But I wanted to take this opportunity to remind everyone — as Finch does — of exactly how long it took American society to analyze this new threat and change our policies to deal with it appropriately.

The change didn’t come from Congress, or from a new Cabinet office. It came through the reactions of civilian passengers on Flight 93, and their loved ones on the ground. And it took one hundred and nine minutes.

This has been commented on before, but it’s worth revisiting, especially in any moments of doubt we may be having about our ability to prevail in this struggle. One hundred and nine minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, our society was able to recognize the new threat, determine how to counter it, and act.

As an occasional Star Trek geek, I find myself compelled to bring up a comparison to the Borg; the race of humanoids who function as a collective mind, completely integrated with their technology. One of their greatest strengths is that no weapon works on them more than a few times — they use their combined abilities to analyze, assess, and adapt to the attack, nearly instantly.

Welcome to the benevolent Borg collective, folks.

Wanted: Soccer Mom BloggersThe recent

Wanted: Soccer Mom Bloggers

The recent York Times piece on bloggers has stirred up yet another round of metacommentary on blogging (“another round” is probably generous — it’s more accurate to say the metacommentary never really stops), and many bright folks have weighed in with their two cents on the future o’ blogging.

Personally, I was unimpressed with the Times piece; despite Glenn’s comments that he was satisfied, it certainly seemed to me to be trying to create a story where there really wasn’t one — i.e., the “rift” between techblogs and warblogs. Am I just dense — is there a war going on and I just didn’t notice it?

But the substance of the piece aside, it has certainly had the salutory effect of driving out some interesting self-reflection in the community, such as Jeff Jarvis’s comments (via Eric Olsen ):

To survive and succeed, weblogs must be embraced by many, many interests and their communities. I’ve seen some good food blogs. We need more entertainment blogs. I can’t believe there aren’t many more sports blogs, from pro all the way down to Little League. I hope to see local blogs and ethnic blogs and, of course, biz blogs.

This is exactly right, but I’ll take Jeff’s points a few steps further.

Once-A-Week Bloggers

In the heart of the warblogger community, a normal rate-of-posting is at least once a day. Many (not just Glenn) are updating many times throughout the day, every day. This is great. But what we really need is not 100 more blogs being updated six times a day — what we need is 100,000 more blogs that are all being updated once a week.

Right now, the political blogs are dominated by — well, political junkies. People who love to think about politics, news, events, and have an opinion on everything. This is, as I said, great. But what would truly be interesting would be to encourage a far, far wider group of people to become involved in blogging — those who don’t want to spend many hours a day on a blog, but who are willing to devote one hour a week.

To keep to what I know best — the political end of the blogosphere — I know what Stephen and Glenn and Mickey and Andrew have to say about homeland security. What I want to know is what the legendary soccer moms have to say about it. We do have a diversity of political opinion in the blogosphere (despite whining complaints of it being conservative-dominated). But what we don’t have enough of is diversity of “time commitment”. The people who are blogging are, by and large, those who are willing to devote a large chunk of time to blogging. And that skews the equation, and limits the spectrum of thought and opinion that we find.

Tools & Talent

What needs to happen for the soccer moms to start blogging? A few things.

First, nobody blogs if they don’t think anybody is reading them. (Or at least, nobody I know). And right now, the tools available to us as blog readers are skewed to favor blogs that are updated very frequently — and readers who are monitoring blogs continuously. Webogs.com’s main list is the worst example. It’s great if you’re monitoring it every few hours and looking to see when Glenn updates. But if you check it once every two days (let’s not even think about only once a week) and are looking for three blogs that update about once a week, then good luck. You’ll never find them; the tool isn’t geared to that kind of usage.

(This is not, by the way, meant as criticism of Weblogs.com — it is a great service and I thank those who run it. But it fills a need — not all needs).

Some add-ons to Weblogs’ main data stream help; BlogTracker lets you select your list of blogs and shows you when they were last updated, and can be used to track blogs over long periods of time. But we need more — more tools, more features on those tools, more flexibility in how to use them, and more independent tools that don’t rely on the Weblogs,com data stream (because after all, the fatal annoyance of Weblogs.com is that it requires the blogger to ping them. We need active monitoring tools to handle sites run by people who’ve never heard of Weblogs.com).

The point being, if there are no tools available to ‘automate’ blog tracking, a normal person is going to reduce down to the five or ten blogs they either remember the URL for, or bother to put in their bookmarks (or, is going to just rely on a major bloggers list like Glenn’s). But with easy-to-use tools, there’s no reason why that list can’t expand to fifty or a hundred weblogs, many of which don’t update frequently. And that sets the stage for the once-a-week bloggers to be able to actually publish with a reasonable belief that just even though they don’t update six times a day, they will still get read.

And the tools need to get better on the authoring side, as well. Surely it is obvious when the blogging revolution will truly have arrived? That’s right: when Microsoft starts bundling Blogger into a version of Windows. Or Internet Explorer (they’re the same thing, right?).

And there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. Using Blogger is a bit harder than using Microsoft Word — but only a bit, and it’s not harder for any really good reason that couldn’t be fixed. So why shouldn’t we see Microsoft bundling a blogging tool and free (limited) hosting on MSN with the next version of Windows?

(I use Microsoft as the obvious example here, but I don’t intend to get into the question of whether they, as the Evil Empire, are the best to do this. AOL could do it, as could any ISP. The ideal situation, of course, would be if they all did it…)

Spread the Gospel

Lastly, the obvious point. We need to spread the gospel o’ blogging. This means reaching out to those who are not yet bloggers but should be — and it also means encouraging those newcomers who are just getting started (and there ain’t no lovin’ quite like linkin’ lovin’ — so that’s the best way to encourage!).

The realization I’ve come to recently is that anybody who enjoys writing — even a little bit — should be blogging. It’s not just to share your wisdom with the world. It’s to clarify for yourself just what your wisdom is. The discipline required to sit down and state your case, to declare an opinion and back it up, forces a person to think critically about the issue at hand. By documenting your thoughts, you actually improve the quality of your thinking.

And that is the true promise of blogging. Not only to create a space where — perhaps — the embryo of a virtual democracy can form, but also to drag people out of their spoon-fed adherence on the Conventional Wisdom of the day. If nobody is listening to you, it feels like it doesn’t really matter if you form your own opinion or just parrot back what you heard on Crossfire. But once you’ve got a platform — the feeling that people are actually listening to what you have to say — well, that makes you think.

And that’s the whole idea.

VodkaPundit refers us to a

refers us to a Michael Kelly piece in today’s WaPo online, in which Kelly stakes out the pragmatic high ground of the civil liberties vs. increased security debate.

First, Kelly:

The proper response to [complaints about security measures violating civil liberties] is: Yes, it is true, this action will indeed hurt or at least insult some innocent people, and we are sorry about that. And this action does represent an infringement of the rights and liberties enjoyed not just by Americans but by visitors to America, and we are sorry about that, too. But we must do everything we can to curtail the ability of the enemy to attack us. This is necessary.

And VP:

Readers here know that VP is as hawkish as they come. But Kelly frightens me a bit. Read him and report back.

Read and reporting as ordered, sir.

I think I know what the problem is here, and why VP is troubled by Kelly, despite being a rather pragmatic fellow himself. Kelly’s central point is that in wartime, we may not, as citizens (or even simple residents) of the United States retain the exact same rights and privleges as we have in peacetime, and that this is a rational and necessary response to realize the greater good of defending the safety and survival of our country. To which most normal folks would reply: “Well, duh!.”

But that’s not the troubling part of Kelly’s piece. The troubling part is that he takes aim at those who are raising concerns about the impact new security measures will have on civil liberties; in effect, the tone of his piece suggests that he thinks they should sit down and shut up.

And this is exactly, 100% wrong. It is precisely because we have people such as those Kelly bashes to raise objections to new policies — and have a society and legal framework that ensures the right to such debate — that we can safely consider rational tradeoffs between liberty and security.

Reader MarkD on VP’s comment board points out that “Fingerprinting aliens is not the first step on a slippery slope to the American Secret Police knocking on your door just because you said mean things about the government. There’s a million breaking points where lines can and will be drawn. This is a democracy and the people will never stand for intrusions on that level.” And MarkD is correct. But Kelly doesn’t seem to want any review of these policies; in describing the dialogue (he calls it “ritual”) between civil liberties activists and government officials pressing for further security measures, he asks alound, “Would it be too much to ask that we cut this out?”

Yes, Mr. Kelly, it would. For while I’ll support your position that some restrictions on liberty may — may be necessary, I will absolutely not support the idea that such restrictions should be put in place without any public feedback or review. Many of the concerns raised may not be valid — they may be stupid, foolish, and irrational. But some won’t be. And in the dialogue between cop and civil liberties lawyer; between spy and protester; in that heat of discussion and opinion flowing back and forth, we will find the truth. The policies that are truly necessary and just will stand — and those that aren’t will get shouted down.

That is why we call this a democracy, and why it is worth defending, remember?

PS – Stephen has now exceeded his quota of interesting pieces for the next day or so. No more links for you, VP!

If you haven’t figured it

If you haven’t figured it out, I’ve backed off from the Hayman coverage. Not because it’s any less important, but because there are folks who are doing a much better job of it that I could. If you are looking for information, please start with the official county sources which I have listed in the top-left of the page. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, then try the media resources. And good luck to all affected.