Day: November 18, 2002

I’m baffled by those who refer to our recent actions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the coming action in Iraq, as “imperialism.”
Take, for instance, Keller in the Times today (as pointed to by Mr. Sullivan): he refers to those who favor an aggressive foreign policy as “the cheerleaders of the new imperialism”.
Most certainly a thing that makes me go “Hmmmmm.”
Iraq as a nation didn’t materialize out of the sand, you know. And America bears more than a little responsibility for establishing the conditions that left Afghanistan such a basket-case that the Taliban appeared to be an improvement (briefly).
Perhaps I’m being overly simplistic, but doesn’t the “new imperialism” look a hell of a lot like fixing the damage done by the old, actual imperialism of Britain and (to a lesser degree) the United States?
Why in the world are military actions designed to get rid of the lousy governments that resulted, in whole or in part, from pre- and post-WWII Anglo-American machinations and replace them with actual democracies regarded as a “new imperialism”?
It’s anti-imperialism, quite literally. Or, in less political terms: it’s called cleaning up your own mess.
You’d think those on the liberal side of the political chasm, who quite rightly condemned many of the actions that led to these governments coming into existence in the first place, would be cheering it on. But that would require accepting that America might actually be acting as a force for good in the world — and that is a concept that today’s Left can’t seem to accept, even for a moment.
Rather a pity, because here’s a news flash: if we aren’t the good guys, then there just plain aren’t any…
PS – See, that was almost actually interesting blogging, wasn’t it? Heck, I’m tryin’ here, throw me a bone…

OK, I wouldn’t call this interesting blogging, but a question for the peanut gallery:
I’m rapidly reaching a point where I’m ready to buy a new PC. As I (and many others) predicted several years back, the traditional required PC-upgrade cycle has collapsed, or rather, expanded dramatically. My Gateway PIII runs at 800Mhz and is over two years old, but frankly, still works just fine.
But, it seems prices have dropped to a degree that I think I should be able to get a quite spiffy P4 running at least 2.4GHz for under $1000. (Note that I don’t need a monitor).
But the question is, what’s the most cost effective path? Historically, I’ve gone the big-boys route, with machines from Micron and Gateway. But I’m tired of that; methinks I can do much better elsewhere. eBay seems to have quite a few manufacturers who sell cutrate systems that seem reasonable, so that’s one option. And I am in Southern California, with a Frys just up the road, so I’m toying with the idea of getting a system from them (or a bare-bones one that might require a bit of assembly on my part).
Any recommendations? I’d love to find a small build-to-order shop with reasonable prices, so if you’ve bought from one, drop a comment here.
This time around, my primary driver is price; I’m definiately not going for the $2500-$3000 models. So any advice on the most economical options would be most welcome.
And also: Any advice on how to track/predict chip price drops? I know Intel is about to release their latest at 3GHz or so; how do I know whether the price drops that usually will cause in the lower-end processors and systems have happened yet?

Got most of the patio work done, including the majority of the (literal) heavy lifting. Hauled in twenty-five bags of patio stone; I’ve now covered about 80% of the patio garden area with weedcloth and the stone, so it looks pretty good. And the remainder is already weeded down from Amazon-level, so the rest should go quick.
Also spent some time printing & framing some of my photographs; long overdue to redecorate the nest. The nice one of the Golden Gate above is a digitally-stitched panorama that I’ve had for a while but was never quite satisfied I had stitched seamlessly enough; fiddled with it a bit more and got it to a state I was comfortable with. (It looks even better in color: I printed it banner sized at 35″ x 10″ and it looks splendid).
Didn’t get anywhere near the dusting-and-vacuuming part; patio took longer than I had hoped. Perhaps today.
Oh, and dinner was homemade pizza (pepperoni, fresh basil, chopped garlic, onions, tomato sauce & mozzarella on a Boboli). Yum.
Yeah, I know; Lileks I ain’t. Actually interesting blogging to follow…