Well, it's a disappointing week for content consumers, with the Eldred v. Ashcroft case decision coming down firmly on the side of Disney and the established content industry. The lawyer for Eldred (and the side of good), Lawrence Lessig, is in understandable anguish over having lost probably the most important case of his career, poor guy.
posted by Tom at 5:15 PM | link | (0) comments

Ug, I'm all tired today. I had the best of intentions -- go home, do laundry, cook dinner, relax -- but got sucked back into Europa Universalis again. My new campaign's going much better than the last one. After stomping the Scots, I signed onto a war against Spain which the French were waging. I managed to capture the centre of trade at Flanders and hold it for about forty years before Dutch nationalism rose to the point that keeping it was untenable. Meanwhile I switched over to Protestantism and send streams of colonists to the east coast of the U.S., founding substantial colonies from the Carolinas up to Manhatten. While Flanders was filling my coffers I managed (after many, many frustrating checks) to get Hanover as a vassal, drastically improve my relations with Denmark, and trade maps with the Portugese who've already got trading posts in Indonesia. My next step is going to be exploring the Indian Ocean from my newest colony in South Africa, and trying to figure out how to weaken the French who've managed to conquer Flanders from the Dutch and are maintaining a half-million strong ground force. It's 1569, Elizabeth I is on the throne, and there's almost 200 game years of play to go. What a great game!

So... I had to stop playing at midnight and have something to eat before bed. So like I said, I'm all tired today.
posted by Tom at 10:02 AM | link | (0) comments

posted by Tom at 9:47 AM | link | (0) comments

posted by Tom at 9:38 AM | link | (0) comments

Anne and I had a busy but useful weekend. Friday night we joined the Usual Suspects for dinner at Joyce's. Maddy apparently used up most of her sick baby fitfulness during the day, so was able to make an appearance and steal the limelight once again. Ian cooked up a very nice chicken dish and we finished the evening by drinking the bottle of ice wine I'd given them as an engagement present.

On Saturday Anne and I wet up to Sporting Life and fought through the S.U.V.-born crowds to the cross-country ski department, where she got a complete package for a not-unreasonable price. We picked up the skis yesterday, and are looking forward to getting out next weekend and hopefully heading to Guelph the weekend after. We also stopped at Future Shop and picked up a new microwave for me, to finally replace the old dead one. The new one is sleek and very nice, and thank-you's to Mum & Dad and Grandpa for the Christmas cash that paid for it!

Other than that, not much else happened. We watched Alien and Aliens on Saturday (and Anne showed considerably more backbone than Dave Lasby at the scary bits). We played Scrabble (and Anne won). We played on the computers (Anne on Civilization 3 while I started a new campaign in Europa Universalis, and this time conquered the Scots right off the bat).
posted by Tom at 10:40 AM | link | (0) comments

Apparently a backlash against S.U.V.'s is picking up momentum. Can't come too soon for me: it's ridiculous (1) that these things are treated as pickups (2) that pickups are allowed to have crappy fuel mileage and (3) that governments aren't making reduction of oil usage a national priority. There are now a couple of ads on U.S. television drawing the connection between S.U.V.'s and the War on Terror, and I hope they're making Mr. Bush's friends in Texas squirm.
posted by Tom at 2:15 PM | link | (0) comments

Third post of the day on this topic. Check out this wonderful article on the current state of the liberal movement in the U.S.. God knows how or why, but the NYTimes seems to have put it in the Travel section. Hilarious.

Here's an important part of this article:


posted by Tom at 12:55 PM | link | (0) comments

There was a time a few years ago when my job forced me to start figuring out how to manage people, not something I had any experience with and not something to which my INTJ personality was well-suited. I bought and read a number of books on managing technical people. It turns out that one of the best publishers of books on this topic is Microsoft Press. One of their books, Dynamics of Software Development, by Jim McCarthy, is now out of print (though it looks like it might be coming out in a second edition this year). It had a number of suggestions, one of which stuck with me: "Don't flip the bozo bit".

Let me explain what this means. A bit is a single binary option, one or zero, true or false. In any computer except the experimental quantum computers bits are always set to one or the other option. Now, McCarthy suggested that we all have internal "bits" when thinking about people or things which are set according to what we know about those people: male/female, known/stranger, friend/not friend, smart/dumb, wise/foolish, etc. He suggested that in business circles one bit determines whether or not we pay attention to other people: bozo/not bozo. The default setting, "not bozo", means that we are prepared to listen to and react to the opinion of the other person. If they do or say something stupid we are tempted to "flip the bozo bit", to decide they are bozos. From that point onward, we will discount their opinions. This is deadly. Once you flip the bozo bit, you tend to want to ignore everything the bozo says, and be annoyed and irritated if forced to pay attention to them, even, or especially, if they're right.

Billions of people have flipped the bozo bit on George Bush. And let's face it, he deserved it. BUT. The consequence of that is that even if he comes up with, or more likely is encouraged by smart people to support, good ideas, even if any of his policies have merit, billions of people are discounting those policies, discarding the idea that any of them have value, and actively resolving the cognitive dissonance that results by grabbing hold of any evidence or arguments that counter those of Mr. Bush, however ludicrous those arguments may be.

Hence, the same very well-meaning human rights leaders who dispaired at Bush's isolationism when he was elected are now equally critical of any suggestion that the U.S. should interfere with the internal workings of very bad, messy places in the world. They're on the wrong side on this one, implicitly siding with an extremely evil man, and from the best of motives are drawing the worst of conclusions. Just goes to show you how dangerous it is to elect a bozo your leader.
posted by Tom at 12:43 PM | link | (0) comments

The NY Times Magazine on the weekend had a long, rambling essay about American empire, written by Michael Ignatieff. It's as good a summary of the state of the world today as I've read recently. I tend to agree with most of what Ignatieff has to say. In brief, he argues that whether or not it is recognized by the American people, the U.S. has an empire today that is as real and tangible as any in the past. Under attack, it may well be right to attack back, but its success is ultimately going to rest on a lot more than military potency. If it can succeed in delivering democracy and peace not just to Iraq, but also to the rest of the Middle East as well, it may yet end up improving its own safety and its foreign image. Obviously, the fear is that Mr. Cheney and Co. only go halfway and leave a messy autocratic system in place in Iraq (and/or fail to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian mess) which would almost certainly make things worse, from both a security and foreign image perspective. As Ignatieff says,


I got a glimmer of hope on the issue yesterday, from seeing this article suggesting that the U.S. may, indeed, be preparing to do more than remove Saddam Hussein.

I guess my current perspective comes down to this:

• I really don't like Bush, the way he was brought to power, the people he is friends with, his belief system, his hypocrisy, or his government.
  
• I can tell the difference between a government and a country, and though I don't like the U.S. government that doesn't mean I don't like the U.S. itself.
  
• I kinda like the U.S., for many reasons, not least of which is that it serves as a beacon for the best educated thinkers of our time, has the will to improve itself, and the institutions to execute that will (even if it doesn't always do it).
  
• Given the choice between a war in Iraq going badly for the U.S., and a war in Iraq going well for the U.S., I think any sane outside observer would have to hope for the latter, even if the war itself is misguided.
  
• Therefore I wish the U.S. well, while hoping and praying that they understand what they're getting into.
  
• And I'm not sure I could come up with a better alternative to war, given where they are. Though Saddam Hussein may not be the imminent threat the Bushies paint him as, there's no doubt he's a very bad man who should not be allowed to have bad weapons.
  
• Of course there's a lot of bad men who should not be allowed to have bad weapons, and there's no way military power's going to stop all of them, so the U.S. better figure out how to start winning friends again. Really helping democracy flourish in the Middle East would be a hugely important start.
  
• I firmly believe that a world with one superpower is a safer world than one without a superpower at all. I know enough history to think that people who are romantic about the past are delusional.

Well, more points could follow, but you get the idea. One last thought: there's a whole lot of hand-wringing in the world at the moment, but there aren't a lot of suggestions as to what should be done. The U.S. right wing is, in my humble opinion, not the best source of ideas for how to fix the world. It's high time the rest of us started offering alternatives. At the moment, the best alternatives seem to keep coming from the same few observers at Harper's and the NY Times. Maybe we should stop thinking about the U.S. as a single entity and start working to support those alternative voices.
posted by Tom at 11:03 AM | link | (0) comments

Star Wars Origami. Some people definitely need to have less free time.
posted by Tom at 11:36 AM | link | (0) comments

Happy 2003! I'm back at work, though today is very quiet. It's been a lovely break, but all good things must end.

After a day of recovery, Anne and I went to her parents' place in Georgetown on Sunday for two nights. We had a really nice time, slightly marred by me coming down with a mild version of the 24-hour flu that's been going around. Since I was feeling a bit under the weather we stayed in for the most part, except for a trip out to the Solid Wood Bed and Table Company store to look at possible dining room tables for Anne. They had some really beautiful stuff at quite reasonable prices.

On Tuesday we returned to the city and to our homes. I spent the afternoon watching the first few episodes of the first season of 24 from DVD. It's an excellent show, very tense, and I'm really enjoying it.

New Year's Eve was at Bruce and Steph's, and featured Ager's arrangement of Auld Lang Syne and a flaming haggis. Paul and Kelly showed up just before midnight with wee Jamie, who's starting to fill in but is still really really small.

Yesterday started really late and we took full opportunity of a final chance to be lazy. I started a campaign game of Europa Universalis as England, and was developing peacefully when the dastardly Scots and French decided to pick a fight. I held my border and grabbed Glasgow and Edinburgh, forcing a peace with Scotland, though it's still pretty tense as to whether I can keep Calais from French hands despite a couple of significant naval victories in the Channel. Meanwhile Jean Cabot founded a trading post in Chicoutimi, but died at the outset of his second voyage, intended to explore Hudson's Bay, so I've had to put my New World ambitions on hold for a while. Great fun.
posted by Tom at 11:41 AM | link | (0) comments