Category: Miscellany

A Nation at War?

M’Arthur in Australia as Allied Commander; Move Hailed as Foreshadowing Turn of Tide
Washington, March 17 — General Douglas MacArthur today became Supreme Commander of the United Nations forces in the Southwestern Pacific. This dramatic shift of command and promotion for the dashing officer who has held the Japanese at bay on the Island of Luzon for three months and ten days was announced by the War Department simultaneously with his arrival in Australia. Traveling by plane, he arrived with his staff and his wife and child.

Third National Army Draft Begins in Capital:
3,485 First Number: All Night is Required for Drawing That Affects 9,000,000 Men: Use in Navy is Urged: Hershey Also Suggests Assigning Some Labor for War Projects

President Warns Against Rushing Anti-Strikes Law:
No Problem Exists at Present and Things Are Going Along Pretty Well, He Cautions: He Explains 40-Hour Act: But Bill to Ban is Is Pushed to Hearings in House- Senate Also Swept by Debate

Gen. Homma Suicide Confirmed by Chilean

50% Airplane Rise Reported by Nelson:
He Warns Three-Month Gain Is Not Enough- K. T. Keller Asked to Head Output

Nazis Close Ports of North Norway:
Reported Adding to Forces- British Say Tirpitz Eluded Torpedo-Plane Attack

Uruguayan Vessel, Two Others Sunk:
Nation Seizes German Ship in Retaliation- Fourth Craft Feared Lost in Bahamas

Bill for Women’s Auxiliary Corps of 150,000 Passed by the House

Daschle is seeking a Special Inquiry on Sept. 11 Attack
Headed for a confrontation with the White House, the Senate majority leader called for an independent panel to investigate government action before Sept. 11.

Leaving for Europe, Bush Draws on Hard Lessons of Diplomacy
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said early missteps provided the president with lessons that made possible the arms pact with Russia

Bono on the Road: Old Tune, New Duo

Security Tightened in New York After Vague Threats of Terrorism
Federal and local law-enforcement officials issued a warning of vague and uncorroborated threats against the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.

$100 Million Fine for Meryl Lynch
Merrill Lynch reached a settlement with New York over charges that its analysts issued misleading research on companies with which it did banking business.

Lots of Seats, but Sorry, This Car’s Taken
It sounds like the dream of an Amtrak rider the night after a really bad trip home…

In New Focus on Quality of Life, City Goes After Petty Criminals

In Guatemala, a Rhode Island-Size Jade Lode
For half a century, scholars have searched in vain for the source of the jade that the early civilizations of the Americas prized above all else and fashioned into precious objects of worship, trade and adornment…

Notes on Methodology

Headlines from 1942 come from the “On This Day” section of the York Times Learning Network. Headlines from 2002 come from the New York Times website. Where possible, I have included the sub-heads or the first sentence or so of each story.

I had hoped to be able to compare today with the same date in 1942, in order to perform a more random comparison, but was only able to locate select archives on the New York Times’ historic site. I picked March 17th, 1942 as the least-momentous date I could find in the available options during WWII which the Times had available (a subjective call, of course).

Comments

I post these without comment — for now — as for some reason, I am struck by an urge to let them speak for themselves… and to let everyone assess their import (or lack thereof) personally. I welcome your comments and thoughts, so please send them my way if you’d like to chime in. And as always, please specify clearly for me if your e-mail is for publication on the site, and if you wish to be attributed by name or quoted anonymously. (I of course reserve the right not to publish anything I don’t see as appropriate…)

This just in from the Arab News: in a democratic election is terrorism.

(found via NRO’s The Corner)

Update: Who the hell writes a headline with the word “It’s” in it, anyway?

Okay, for you HTML/Blogger knowitalls out there: how do I modify my template so that I can have the “link color” be different in my header above than it is in the rest of the page? I like the dark blue on everything except the quotes in the header…

Update: And while you’re at it, enlighten me as to why the first line of anything I post is always indented slightly.

Cheap, unlikely-to-ever-pay-off motivation: A free TTLB novelty item of your choice, should such items ever come into existence. (Yes, I have

I’ve now updated the site layout so that the latest Dream Team list appears in the left margin. I knew I’d find a use for all that space under my fat old graphic…

The Dream Team Responds

I have been wondering just what reaction the authors who have been named on our list would have to the proposal. So, I took the wacky approach of, well, asking them.

I’ve corresponded with a few members of our theoretical dream team, at this point, and reprint here their comments (with their permission). The good news is, I’m hearing a fairly consistent response that — at some levels, at least — the idea of bringing ‘creative types’ into the planning process seems to have some traction. The bad news is, it sounds like it has a ways to go.

Brin, who has a relevant web site here, replied with the following:

Actually, it might surprise you how many bright people are thinking along similar lines… and inviting we sci fi types to express thoughts about threats. At the middle and upper-middle level, there are brilliant people in the military and government, deeply concerned and working their butts off. I attended a conference in Washington (as dinner speaker) where several geniuses spun terrifying scenarios.

Alas, (1) it is a complex world and we make a big/complex target (2) our leadership is not very smart.

Your concern is the same one that motivated my nonfiction book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? Only in a mostly open society will commonfolk stand a chance of holding the mighty – or the dangerous – accountable.

Good luck!

You can find The Transparent Society at Amazon, of course. I’ve been aware of it for a long time, and I am now consumed with guilt for having not yet read it. The shame!

Greg Bear responded with the following note:

Cool name! And thanks for posting the nomination. Truth is, I was in Washington a few weeks ago attending a conference on bioterrorism, so there are some folks listening.

The rest of the list is terrific. There are some sad spots, however–Harry Stine died a couple of years ago.

Yup, Mr. Stine’s passing has been noted. And I of course tip my hat to Mr. Bear for the compliment on my nom de plume.

I’m still waiting on a whole bunch of other inquiries I’ve sent, and I’ll of course post appropriate replies here as I receive them. Also: I have not attempted to contact every name on our list; mainly those whose work I am familiar with personally. If you’d like to attempt to contact someone yourself, please go right ahead, but drop me a line first to ensure that I haven’t already sent them a message. Mailbombing our dream team is impolite.

Clark Goble writes in regarding the creative dream team effort and has a few points o’ constructive criticism. I include his note in its entirety below, along with my comments / responses interspersed:

Regarding your list of authors for your think tank. I’d take a couple of exceptions with it. First the claim that some of them are good authors. While they may have interesting plots and ideas many are *horrible* authors. Take Dean Ing. He may be a creative, smart guy, but a good novelist? Come on. His prose is so stilted that it makes High School fiction look like Shakespeare. Of course you didn’t pick these fellows for their prose, but it does make me wonder if a few “James Bond” like scenarios that seem cool is behind your list.

Can’t vouch for Ing myself, so I won’t try — and recall that I’m not putting any filters on the process here, just collecting the list of suggestions from the masses. I would agree that literary merit isn’t a precondition for being a good candidate for our list here — but having a creative mind is.

I mean if you are going to do this sort of thing, at least pick a novelist who has some experience in the field. Take, for instance Dick Marcinko who actually formed one of the top Navy Seal teams, has experience in hands on counter-terrorism, and has lots of books with very creative terrorist attacks on the US. Plus he has a helper-writer so his prose, while expletive-ridden, is at least entertaining and not at all stilted. About the only downside with him is that he screwed up the hostage rescue of the Iranian hostages back under Carter. But I’m not sure you can necessarily blame him for that.

Don’t know but he sounds ok — sort of. The military background is good, but frankly, the government has access to plenty of people with Navy Seal experience. If they want to know what a Navy-trained counterterrism expert thinks is going to happen, I’m sure they’ve got plenty of them. What I’m trying to do here is get the folks who have different perspectives that you won’t find in traditional military or government circles and get their minds applied to the problem.

Jerry Pournelle I’ll actually go along with. Ing, I’m more leery about as I think he is too much into the “techno-thriller” sort without the pragmatism that Pournelle has. A lot of the other science fiction authors I’m dubious about for similar reasons. I think you should have perhaps one or two, but beyond that and you’re biasing you panel too much. Get some “keep it simple” low tech guys in there. Novelists are fine and dandy, but probably I’d throw in a few criminals. They know how to think in non-standard ways but also are aware of a lot of low-tech “holes” that even novelists don’t know about.

I’m all for criminals. For the team, I mean. Clark’s point is a classic one and is well taken — to catch a thief, and all that.

For that matter, if you want someone good, throw in the guy who runs Slash-dot. (www.slashdot.com) His “blog” is the most popular among techies. He moderates all the comments, and believe me there is nothing like geeks with too much time on their hands to hash things down to their core and find the holes. Plus he reads and edits all these sorts of stories that points out weaknesses in computer *and* dumbassed weaknesses in policy.

So for my ideal panel you have one sci-fi author, Pournell. Marchinko who has the experience, thinks nasty, and already has experience launching attacks on US soil. (He broke into air force one and placed smoke bombs in it) “Cowboy Neal” from slash-dot to represent the “too much intelligence and not enough challenges” anarchistic hacker community. Then some criminal used to breaking security. (Although Marcinko may have plenty of experience there) Perhaps one other person – preferably a mideast expert with experience in Islam. Keep it small. Any bigger and it’ll become unweldly.

I like the Slashdot suggestion. Despite being a self-described geek, I am not actually a Slashdot junkie (head hangs in shame). But I’ll send a note their way and see what they think of the idea.

Thanks for the comments Clark, and keep them coming all…

New York Newsday has a web site up with designs for rebuilding the World Trade Center area. I was going to include my own commentary, but I’m not going to bother, because VodkaPundit nails it, so just go read his. I thought he was just being his usual grumpy self, but then I looked at the designs, and he’s actually being way too generous.

I do, however, like the Liberty Square proposal (which isn’t on the Newsday site), also pointed to (approvingly) by our favorite martini-quaffing blogger, via a column in Reason Online by Ronald Bailey.

I’m adding Robinson as one of my personal nominees for our creative dream team to brainstorm future terrorist scenarios & prevention.

I originally had Spider in my mental category of writers whose work I enjoy greatly, but who weren’t necessarily well suited for the task at hand. But the more I think about it, the more I think he’d have much to offer. His novel Night of Power is a rather original take on a takeover of New York City (the whole thing!), and his Mindkiller shows he knows how to explore the dark side of new technologies. (Not to mention that his excellent short story “Melanacholy Elephants” has some interesting insights for anyone paying attention to current debates on the how long copyrights should extend — no, really). My only complaint with Spider is that I wish he’d write more stuff outside of his Callahan’s short stories universe. Some of these, especially the earlier ones, are absolutely brilliant and touching works of SF, but I must admit I’ve tired of the crew over the years. But a man must pay the bills, so I’m not going to quibble with Mr. Robinson too much.

Anyway, check him out & send feedback my way if you have comments, as always…

To recap, our full list now is as follows:

Tom Clancy
John Barnes (see Mother of Storms).
Kim Stanley Robinson
Christopher Hitchens
Iain M. Banks
Ken MacLeod
Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle
Al Franken
P.J. O’Rourke
George Carlin
Greg Bear
Gregory Benford
David Brin
Greg Egan
S.M. Stirling
Stephen Baxter
Stanislaw Lem
Dean Ing
Harry Stine*
Thomas Harris
Vince Flynn
Peter O’Donnell
Robert L. Forward
Vernor Vinge
Charles Sheffield
L. Ron Hubbard*

*Indicates deceased and not expected likely they will serve if called. (Hubbard I knew; it was pointed out to me in correspondance that Harry Stine has also passed on.)

Translation Update

I just noticed in my tracking stats that I’ve got some gov.uk users dropping by, so I figured I should apologize:

The translation engine does not currently support translating from American to English.

Sorry, chaps!

Next stop: Total Global Dominiation

Experimenting with a new feature on the site: automatic translation to other languages. With an hour or so of playing around, I seem to have gotten auto-translation working via

The service is limited to Spanish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Portuguese for the moment. I’m bummed about the lack of Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and Farsi, and the translation process is a bit slow, but oh well. It’s free, I can’t (or at least, shouldn’t) complain too much.

For now, I’ve just got the setup working for the front page… I don’t think it works from the archives. I’ll check that out later.

So has anyone else played around with tools like this? Something is telling me I just re-invented the wheel, but I’m not sure I’ve seen translation tools on other blogs. I’ll have to look more closely in my rounds today. Anyway, if you have any suggestions or comments, or information on other tools, please send them my way.

I must admit I find the potential here staggering. The community o’ the blogsphere is a wonderful thing, but to imagine if it were possible to have bloggers planetwide, blogging merrily away in their native languages, and have everyone else be able to read them… damn, makes me want to go re-read my archive issues of Wired from 1993 or something.

Anyway, by all means, if you’re a non-English speaker reading the site, drop me a line, and let me know if the translation is working properly. If your language is one of those I have translation for, you can even do so in your native tongue and I’ll try to auto-translate your email — but in this case, please use as simple language as possible, so we don’t confuse the poor machines at FreeTranslation. I speak American High School Spanish, and am very slowly learning Persian (Farsi), so I’ll have to mostly trust the translation engine, I’m afraid.

Come to think of it, I don’t really have a way of verifying whether the translation of my own tortured prose is truly working. For all I know, when I say:

Let’s establish a dream team of creative types to brainstorm future possible terrorist scenarios.

My Norwegian users might now be getting:

Please help urgently my hovercraft is full of eels.

Ah well, we’ll see, I guess…

I corresponded with Bill Patterson, editor of Heinlein Journal, who provided some additional detail on science fiction writers’ contribution during WWII. But first, he begins with a correction to my earlier anecdote regarding Heinlein’s story “Solution Unsatisfactory”:

The story about government agents checking out a writer’s sources for atomic information does not relate to Heinlein or to “Solution Unsatisfactory” — that was, after all, before the war and before any security restrictions; it happened to Cleve Cartmill who found FBI agents waiting for him in John Campbell’s office during the war. The name of the story that appeared in ASF escapes me at the moment.

Patterson continues with the following additional detail on the war effort:

Second, you have assumed that Heinlein, de Camp and Asimov wound up working at NAES because of some attempt to get sf writers, and this is not quite correct. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, RAH took off for New York to use John Campbell’s place as a base from which to seek some kind of military post. He was ultimately unsuccessful in this — the reason given was that he was an “old lunger” (TB patient) and the Navy didn’t want old lungers in contact with active duty personnel, or at least that was doctrine at the time. He felt it was rather that he had offended the head of the Department of the Navy in an incident in his political career. He and Campbell and several others talked about what they would do in the war effort. Heinlein put out feelers and was pulled in by his friend Albert Scoles who was then running the Materials Center at the Naval Air Experimental Station at Mustin Field in Philadelphia, to act as a Civilian Engineer until his reactivation could come through. At that time L. Sprague de Camp, who was also trained as an engineer, was going to Naval Officer school. Heinlein suggested that Scoles tap him as well. And Asimov, a graduate chemist, was also at loose ends, so Heinlein suggested that Scoles recruit him as well. During Heinlein’s time at NAES, he is widely credited with acting as a personnel recruiter, and these two were simply the ones we know about, and they were recruited because they had useful engineering skills. It happened that Heinlein’s social life had mutated into hanging out with his writer colleagues, so that’s how it all came about.

Now, I don’t have all the details about the Kamikaze task force, but there were several SF writers in it, and it does seem to be true that they were recruited for their writerly imagination. It appears that the group RAH headed was outside of regular channels and they hoped for fast results from unorthodox thinkers. But the war was over before anything useful could be produced and implemented. However, there were more and other people at these group meetings than the sf writers we’re familiar with (including Sturgeon and Hubbard and at least occasionally Campbell).

So far as I know the imagination of sf writers was Heinlein’s idea, and it may never have entered into anything official. The most likely scenario is that somebody thought that the official group in Naval Intelligence would never produce anything (or at least not timely) and King or someone on his staff authorized another operation on the Q-T that became the Kamikaze group. It’s not entirely impossible that King contacted RAH directly, but it’s not likely either. King had been RAH’s captain in the Navy from 1930-1932. He was advanced to head the Naval War by Roosevelt, apparently over the objections of his advisors, but that is a matter of public record so I won’t go into it here.

Thanks to Bill for the clarification and additional information!

Can’t sleep. Guess it’s time to blog.

A few days back I alluded to a mysterious “reader” who me to a Boston Globe article on Vatican legal scholar Rev. Gianfranco Ghirlanda. He remained mysterious as I couldn’t get the provided link to his site to work; but that now having been corrected, he is mysterious no more: check him out at The Daily Babble.

can’t stop linking to TTLB !

The Mickster has now linked to my humble page no less than three separate times in the past 36 hours. It appears to be some kind of strange addiction.

But Mr. Kaus’s pain is my gain, so welcome, Kausfans and Slate-junkies, to the humble page of a humble bear!

By the way: Do I need to point out less subtly the inherent amusement of the web site for Internet Addiction? Nah, didn’t think so.

Are the real spooks The Truth Laid Bear? Or is the ‘creative dream team’ just an idea whose time has come?

You be the judge.

Read the whole article down ’til the end to get to the real relevant part. And if you find WSJ registration odious, check out Mickey’s summary.

case you are shopping for a gift for the geek who has everything.

Celine Dion’s New Day Has Come: $12.98

Black felt tip marker: $1.35

Making opponents of openly reviewing security systems look like idiots: Priceless

Creative Dream Team Update

Okay, the nominations have been pouring in, so time for an update. My methodology is simple: I’m listing every suggestion I received, along with my own comments (where I have any) about the nominees.

original list, as you’ll recall, was:

Tom Clancy
John Barnes (see Mother of Storms).
Kim Stanley Robinson
Christopher Hitchens
Iain M. Banks
Ken MacLeod

New nominees are:

Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
By far the most commonly submitted nominees, and foolish of me to have ommitted them in the first place.

Al Franken, P.J. O’Rourke, and George Carlin
Laurence Simon over at File13 sent these in, and advises: “Toss in a few wise-asses because they always see the faults in the system”. The man has wisdom.

The “Killer B’s”: Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, and David Brin
Also extremely popular nominees (and also fine choices).

Instapundit adds the following suggestions:

Greg Egan: (“The best up-and-coming hard science fiction writer, and our
world is looking more like his all the time.” – Instapundit)

S.M. Stirling (“mostly doing alt-history these days, but a supple mind
and he’s done harder stuff.” – Instapundit)

Stephen Baxter (no commentary from Glenn here, but I’ll second the nomination — particularly since Baxter often seems to have great difficulty ever finishing a novel without destroying the Earth first.)

One reader suggests Stanislaw Lem, “particularly for his outstandingly prophetic Imaginary Magnitudes, which completely anticipated the ‘Net via Vestrand’s Extelopedia.”

And another proposes Dean Ing, indicating “He’s been in US think tanks re future weapons. Also he’s written several good novels and novelettes on terrorism and gotterdammerung in general.”, and Harry Stine (whose work I’m afraid I’m not familiar with, but who the reader indicates also writes under the name Lee Correy, and wrote “Shuttle Down which involved a Space Shuttle aborting to Easter Island. The book was good enough to be used as a NASA manual…”)

Thomas Harris, of Hannibal Lecter fame, is nominated by a reader for his earlier work, Black Sunday, “about a psycho blimp pilot who loads his craft with flechettes (anti-personnel darts) and flies it over the stadium in which the Super Bowl is being played.”

(By the way, if you check the Amazon entry for Black Sunday, you’ll see the following comment from a reader/reviewer, circa September 2000: “Finally, this book is sort of outdated. You can’t fault Harris for this, but it’s worth noting. Though it doesn’t really show up in the book (thankfully), the general plot (Middle Eastern terrorists trying to blow something up) sort of prays on the fears of the zenophobic middle American. It’s a simple formula which I’ve seen many times, and has been done many times.” And I’m afraid you’ll see it again, friend.)

Another nomination: Vince Flynn, whose Transfer of Power “tells how a campaign contributor turns a White House visit into the kidnapping of a president.”. Sounds like the kind of twisted thinking we’re looking for.

And more: British author Peter O’Donnell, Robert L. Forward, and Vernor Vinge make another reader’s list. (Yet again an omission on my part: no idea why I didn’t put Vinge on my original list… except maybe a subconcious wish that he’d publish a little more frequently!) And another reader seconds many of the previous nominations, and adds Charles Sheffield to the mix.

Last but not least, my favorite nomination was from a reader who suggested L. Ron Hubbard, who actually did write science fiction before founding his own religion, let’s remember. But I did feel obligated to reply to the reader that while we might well nominate him, it’s unlikely that he’ll show up for work, given that he’s dead.

That’s it for now. Kee
p them coming — I don’t think we’ve drained this particular swamp yet. And by the way: if you see your nominations here without your name, it is because I did not publish anyone’s name where I was uncertain if they wished to be publicly attributed. If you would like to claim your public credit, as it were, drop me a line and say so and I’m glad to cite you appropriately.

In researching Heinlein and other science fiction authors’ work during WWII, I corresponded with James Gifford, author of A. Heinlein: A Reader’s Companion (a 2001 Hugo award nominee). In addition to providing me some further detail on Heinlein’s history and excellent pointers to other sources, he provided the following thoughts on defending against suicide attacks and the road that lies ahead:

A general exposition from my own viewpoint is that there is no way to stop a suicide attack. As the cutline for the graphic novel _Ronin_ put it, “If you intend to die, you can do anything.” All crimes are prevented by one of two things: the fear of death, and the possibility of being detected, caught and punished. If the first is missing, the second is of no consequence… and you have no possible prevention short of mindreading and on-the-spot execution.

The only possible way to prevent a majority of suicide attacks is the road we’re currently on – a severe and (IMHO) highly dangerous intrusion into civil liberties…

If there is a solution, it is to find a combination of technology and intelligence (both kinds) that will protect us while not overly impinging on our personal freedoms and our justly prized liberty. As the gent with the specs put it: those who would give up a little liberty to obtain a little security deserve neither. Our liberty and freedom have a price, and for the next decades, the price will have to be paid. One price or the other, that is, and since there is no way to eliminate the threat, paying in the coin of liberty in an attempt to do so is a foolish idea. It is, unfortunately, the road we have apparently chosen.

So, if you seek to put together a coalition of inventive brains to solve the problem, they need a focus beyond technological miracles. I can’t imagine any techno-magic of any kind whatsoever that would solve the problem without creating a bigger one. The solution, if there is one, is to eliminate the strife, the conflict, the disagreements that lead to suicide attacks.

Definitely. But the key is that our strategy must simultaneously include steps to protect us from those that wish us harm in the here-and-now, and also strive to create a future world where the threats we face today are reduced — if not outright elminated.

Despite my usual warnings about lumping people into large categories, I think there are only really two groups that are terribly helpful to think about when considering our adversaries in this struggle. There are people who detest us and will oppose us until death (Al Qaeda). And there are people who don’t like us much, who might be convinced to support those opposing us, or might otherwise be swayed to leave us the hell alone (much of the rest of the Muslim world).

The solution for the first group is, obviously, to destroy them. And it is important to note that this is not vengeance: it is prevention. When we kill an Al-Qaeda operative, there is no need to invoke the obscenity of September 11 and concepts of retribution, revenge, or even justice. We take that grave action — to end another human life — not for what Al-Queda has done to us in the past, but for what they have sworn to do to us in the future. It is not capital punishment; the proper analogy is not to a convicted prisoner walking death row, but to a rapist who is shot dead by his intended victim before he can commit his crime.

For the second group, the options are more varied and complex. I am a firm believer in the idea that while stable democracies may actually go to war with one another from time to time, they don’t have a habit of spawning suicide bombers. (Note: before someone points it out, England is a stable democracy — Northern Ireland is not). So, duh: the trick is how to transition the essentially medieval societies of theocratic Islamic or pseudo-Islamic states (my by-no-means-complete list begins with Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and of course, the portion of Arabia currently ruled by the House of Saud) into stable democracies. Easier said than done.

But we shouldn’t get hung up on the idea that we must turn every state and people on the globe into our ally. That would be great, but it is not necessary. They can positively detest us. They can think we’re callow, insipid, jingoistic cowboys with brains programmed by Disney and bodies atrophied by the Internet. All that matters is that they don’t quite hate us enough to be willing to die to kill us.

And that, I think, has to be an achievable goal. Because let’s face it: it’s not like we’re trying to convince the world to like Nazis. We happen to have the advantage here of being one of the most legitimately decent societies to ever stride the face of the planet. Surely we can do a better job of convincing folks of that than we have to date (as a story, it has the advantage of being true.)

Finally, to return to one James’ points: I agree that technogadgetry is unlikely to provide any direct solution to the problem of preventing suicide attacks. But for now, I’d rest easier knowing that we at least had confidence that we’ve given our own defenses a thorough shake-down, and analyzed our own weaknesses unflinchingly. We’d at least, then, have accomplished the first step of preventing an enemy attack: knowing where it might come from.

The Results Are In!

Well, I said I’d keep y’all posted on the relative merits of ™ vs. KausPower ™, and I think we can now reach some conclusions — the graph to the right (subtly annotated) shows my traffic stats for the last few days.

In my objective, dispassionate view, I don’t think there’s any other way to put it but:

Soulless media conglomerate: 1
Noble academic toiling in obscurity: 0

‘Course, Mickey has mentioned that the new Borg implants they’ve insisted on over in Redmond chafe a bit, but I guess everything has its downside.

Memo to Glenn: Now could be the time to hit up AOL for that deal, chief. They’re in desperate need of some kind of turnaround strategy — and I say you were aiming way too low when you thought about “selling out to them”. I’m thinking major New Media company, here:

AOL/TimeWarnerPundit

PS – All kidding aside, sincere thanks to both Mickey and Glenn for their links (not to mention the genuine enjoyment and insight I’ve received from reading their work). It is truly a demonstration of the spirit o’ the blogosphere that someone as new to this game as I could get this kind of attention this quickly.