The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by edub:

Charlie Stross:

Time zones are irrelevant, believe me.

Daily Kos had a thread today based on an Onion piece about Gray Davis. Many of the commentators noted how the Onion and the Daily Show seem to be more reliable news sources these days than the NY Times.

Madjayhawk writes:

I thought that the days when many of the principals in the Paula Jones case just happened to get audited by the IRS were behind us.

Got a source, other than some right-wing birdcage liner?

OK, Madjayhawk, you've said a mouthful. Let's just take one sentence that stood out:

Iraq was a threat to its neighbors and was sponsoring terrorism.

Give me evidence of this, and I'll admit you have an argument.

So by equating Roosevelt with Bush you evade the Churchill comparison, while at the same time using someone who criticizes you to somehow defend your position?

Or have I got it backwards?

A pissing match with a conservative is like a staring contest with a pigeon. Even if you "win," the only thing you've beaten is a pigeon.

And I think more highly of PNH's blog, I really do, than to pollute it with blog-urine. Sorry. I don't feed the trolls, unless they actually say something refutable, but eventually circular logic makes my head spin.

This is what you typed, not that I should have to reproduce it, since you said it yourself a few posts up:

When Roosevelt (thousands of miles from the actual fighting)

Then why, oh why, did you point out that Roosevelt was thousands of miles away from the actual fighting? Did your fingers slip? What did you mean?

Anthony, for the life of me, I can't figure out why you aren't badmouthing him.

Here's what you wrote earlier:

When Roosevelt (thousands of miles from the actual fighting)

Ok, I'll concede your point. Roosevelt was a coward. He should have been on Normandy, or at least at Pearl Harbor.

You quote Churchill way up the thread. Where did Chruchill spend the war?

OK. The topic at hand is irrelevant. I thought so.

Thanks anyway.

Anthony VanWagner, God Bless you.

Between Churchill, Byrd, and Roosevelt, you about quoted the entirety of Western Democratic thought during the latter 20th century.

You must really be good at searching either Google or Bartleby.com.

Any thoughts about the topic at hand? Like whether Bush is encouraging Iraqis to attack Americans? Or whether Senator Lautenberg is out of line for his criticism? How about whether Bush deserves a wedgie?

An anxious nation is determined to ignore you otherwise. At least I am.

Derek:

Thanks for sticking around. I was being facetious, I admit, but I'm curious why you would nominate Tim Russert as an example of a hard-hitting American journalist. His track record is pretty bleak, and I would make that statement even if his concocted MTP interview with Dean had never occurred.

PNH writes:
Sometimes, comment is superfluous.

Derek James writes:
And sometimes a glib remark is easier than actually substantiating your viewpoint.

Derek, are you new around these parts?

I'm grasping here, because I haven't read the book, but isn't this somewhat similar to what David Brin suggested in The Transparent Society?

From the Amazon.com review, because I'm too lazy to dig any deeper:

There's even talk of bringing in microphones to augment the cameras. Brin has no doubt that it's only a matter of time before they're installed in numbers to cover every urban area in every developed nation.
While this has the makings for an Orwellian nightmare, Brin argues that we can choose to make the same scenario a setting for even greater freedom. The determining factor is whether the power of observation and surveillance is held only by the police and the powerful or is shared by us all. In the latter case, Brin argues that people will have nothing to fear from the watchers because everyone will be watching each other. . .

It's all about transparency, which many people probably won't give a hoot about, and will cause some, on the left and the right, to go absolutely ballistic. And while I'm connecting my dots, it isn't too far-fetched to suggest that dna testing (the ultimate transparency, especially if given to certain third parties) might lead to universal health coverage. Dwight Meredith certainly believes so:

People with few or no genetic predispositions for diseases will be unwilling to enter insurance pools with those who are genetically predisposed become sick.


Insurance companies will be reluctant to assume the risk of large health care expenses for individuals with genetic defects related to expensive diseases.


Given those two factors, our current system of private health insurance will collapse. We will either then mandate universal coverage regardless of individual risk assessment or abandon the concept of health care insurance leaving each individual to the luck of the genetic draw.

Brave New World, but with a good dose of individualism (not to mention a massive governmental program) thrown in.

Will this mean an end to the fortune-telling business? Only time will tell.

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