http://tinyurl.com/4yn9za

Haven’t done much more than skim this. Will read it tonight but I was put off by all them big words and concepts like “A Durkheimian ethos can’t be supported by the two moral foundations that hold up a Millian society…”.

I am so sick of Firefox. I’ve given it every chance to redeem itself. I’d shelved version two in favor of running IE 6 in three or 4 windows and having to shut them down every hour or two. But I installed V3 after falling for all the online hoopla about how much better it was at using memory and how it didn’t crash as much as two.

Jeez what a letdown! I probably didn’t help it any by installing every plugin under the sun but even after disabling or uninstalling them there was no getting around the fact that it hogged memory like nobody’s business. Every app I have had to wait in line while that pig took its time getting hung up in the dumbest ways possible. Switching tabs, loading sites with flash and active pages, it was the slowest thing I’d ever seen save Windows Live writer which I’m using to write this post.

Firefox really had a problem with Digsby, which I use to aggregate all my social networks and email accounts. For some reason these two got in each others way so much I had a hard time deciding which one should go. I raised the ceiling a little bit the other day by popping in 512 megs of RAM which helped but it still hung, just not as often.

The last straw came when I felt it seizing up on me the other day. I managed to open Task Manager and after about 5 minutes of watching the paint dry I saw that Firefox had consumed a whopping 300 megs of RAM and had my processor pinned at 100%! The hundred percent wasn’t new to me but seeing that pig gobble 300 megs of RAM while doing nothing just pissed me off.

So I yanked it. Without a bit of regret. But what to put in it’s place?

Next: Browser Wars II - Not as many choices as you think!

I can’t believe the number of postings I’ve seen on the various blogs and news sites that say that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is a “family matter” and not a political issue! That’s just nonsense. There is not one “family matter” that doesn’t have one foot in the political arena simply because they affect us as individuals who are members of a community.

I may want to sit in my living room and smoke cigarettes, drink scotch and watch TV ’til I croak. I have the right to do so, but that doesn’t mean anyone can’t criticise or dicuss my behavior in the context of the overall health of the black male in society if they want to. I can act on it or give ‘em the finger but I can’t shut ‘em up.

Same for Bristol Palin’s pregnancy:
We have a right to talk about it in a political context because she’s another pregnant 17 year old in a country where woman have had to fight for the right NOT to end up in the same boat she’s in.
We have a right to talk about it in a political context because her own mother advocates a form of birth control that is unscientific, ineffectual and, like it or not, a part of our international AIDS policy which elicits worldwide disdain.

As long as we can legislate what goes on with the human body the body politic has a right to talk about it.

Alright, the soapbox is up for grabs now…

I just have a hard time believing that Ahmad Chalabi conned the White House into this whole thing. This article in The Independent from May of last year has a telling quote that illuminates the point:
“Did he invent evidence of weapons of mass destruction or prompt witnesses to do so? In fact all the opposition, particularly the Kurdish security services, were doing this. But it was absurd for the CIA and assorted American services and newspapers along with MI6 to later claim that they were misled. They knew what President George Bush and Tony Blair wanted and gave it to them.”
(italics mine)
What did they want?

If you place the article from the National Security Archive on the timeline it supports the contention that the Bush cabinet had a hard-on for attacking Iraq, what the Phase II report termed a fixation on Iraq, but none of the accumulation of data dares to define a reason, short of saying that the White House deemed Saddam Hussein a threat to U.S. security.

Now, my admittedly hyperactive conspiracy theory gland wants me to say that it was something as simple as oil or Haliburton contracts (see this aforementioned timeline to see the links to the Oil hypothesis) but my logic gland wants somebody else with a bigger brain to link all the beads together. And at that point if the conclusion is as nefarious, nay criminal as my gut tells me it is, then when do we start throwing the obvious criminals in jail?

(I’m EP, in cse you didn’t guess.)

What is VLES?VLES is an online music community supported by a 3D world. Designed to support artists, fans and local music. It is a single point of contact for discovery of new music and simulating the music scene of the LESWe have two goals:1. make it incredibly easy for bands to self-publish music, and find their audience.2. make it incredibly easy for fans to find music they love and support the artists that make it.How much does it cost to join VLES?Nothing, and there are no levels or special features that cost more. Everything is available to every artist and fan that joins. 

This sums up their mission:

What are the future plans for VLES?It will become the realization of all your dreams and desires and will fulfill all who touch it and bring peace to the world and cure cancer and stop the sun from going out and the ice caps from melting.  

While that may or may not be true, it’s clear that virtual worlds are here to stay.  

Alive in Baghdad employs Iraqi journalists to produce video packages each week about a variety of topics on daily life in Iraq. Through the work of a team of Americans and Iraqi correspondents on the ground, Alive in Baghdad shows the conflict through the voices of Iraqis. Alive in Baghdad brings testimonies from individual Iraqis, footage of daily life in Iraq, and short news segments from Iraq to you. 

 Every day we get a little closer to the mythic fully immersive 3D multiverse…