Thursday, February 24, 2005

No Sissy Town, Chicago

Here I am in Chicago.
It feels a little strange, moving to Chicago.
But moving is always this way, more or less.
More later.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

U.S. Enters The Great Game

Want to read an interesting history book? One that really sheds light on today’s world? Try “The First Great Triumph” by Warren Zimmermann. It tells the story of 5 men and what they did to put the United States into the race to replace Great Britain as the world’s dominant nation.

It is not a story of “triumph,” actually. It is a story of 5 men who saw that England was falling out of First Place, and did not want Germany, or Japan, China, Russia, or any other country, to have any more influence in the world than the United States did. The race was on, and it made no sense to the 5 individuals (Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Alfred Mahan) for the U.S. to opt out of the contest.

The context: By the late 1800s the British Empire was running out of gas. Its declining strength relative to other powers set off a worldwide contest to see who would take first place in The Great Game of geopolitics. After a hundred years of wars of all kinds that lasted about a hundred years, and killed about 80 million people, the United States came out in first place.

Zimmermann tells about the good and the bad of these 5 men and their times. It is a messy story for either the jingos or the anti-jingos. It is worth the 500 pages if you like this kind of story.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Shades of Error

Look at the mistakes. Yes, about 65% if eligible Iraqis voted, but that ink used to mark the fingers of voters was not the best shade of purple. Grape, eggplant and lavender are all more attractive shades, and they were ignored by the bumbling Iraqi election commission. And voters' index fingers were supposed to be stained up to the knuckle, according to the SOP, but reports are pouring in that in many cases the ink reached above or below the knuckle, and in some cases it was voters' thumbs that were erroneously marked. Whew! All that planning and effort and they blew it.

TOTH to Rich Lowry for this information.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Rules and Other Rules

"...some rules for the conduct of life are matters of right and wrong, substantial, essential, and other rules for the conduct of life are matters of convenience, of form, of method, desirable but not essential." - Elihu Root 1846-1937

Quoted in "The First Triumph - How Five Americans Made Their Country A World Power," by Warren Zimmermann. P. 143

(Very good book, BTW. The Big Five are E. Root, T. Roosevelt, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Alfred Mahan.)

Apples Defeat Worms, etc.

Walt Mossburg, the WSJ's technology columnist, writes that the only way to absolutely get rid of spyware, spybots, and the other web junk that ruins PCs is to switch to Macintosh. So after Richard and Sarah bought an iMac G5, and I played with it for a few days, I started taking all these free classes at Apple stores in Virginia and Florida.

Mac OS X version 10.3 "Panther" ~ iMacs (the new slick one-unit screen/CPU machines) ~ eMacs (the Mac for kids and schools) ~ Keynote (the Apple 'PowerPoint') ~ Pages (their 'desktop publishing' program) ~ Bluetooth (the wireless apparatus) ~ and the family of image and sound stuff (iTunes, iPods galore, iMovie, etc., etc.)

Judging just from the buzz in the press AND the heavy crowds in the three Apple stores that I have be hanging around lately, Apple seems to be making a big move. The WSJ says Apple only has about 3% of the computer market, but I’ll bet that changes significantly soon. My next machine will be an Apple, I think, just to get around the Internet contamination problem.

The Apples I have been experimenting with are equipped with the latest and greatest versions of Microsoft Office, which are neater than the 1998 version that I have been using, so some of the fun has been using the new MSO versions.

BTW, I am writing on a Mac mini…the $500 Apple that is about the size of a Panera Bread cinnamon bun, and uses your existing monitor, keyboard, mouse, they say. A very cheap way to have a serviceable Mac, if true.

The sales people at these three stores, at least, have been friendly and knowledgeable, as well as laidback.

If you use a PC, go try these new machines.