Epacris: Heinlein was a facist! It's obvious, I just read Starship Troopers and...
Well, that's the stupid troll response done with, so here's a snarky and probably less-than-accurate answer; someone will be along and tell you where I was wrong (everywhere) and how (in every way):
Anarchists don't believe in the state; they can be either left-anarchist (believes in the inherent goodness of people) of various stripes, which I have never understood, or right-anarchist (believes in the inherent goodness of markets). This is of course an extreme simplification, and terms like "left" and "right" aren't quite applicable.
Libertarians tend to be on the rightward end of the political spectrum in some ways; small (but still some) government, emphasis on freedoms. There's also Libertarianism, which is a political party, which shouldn't be confused with small-l libertarianism, except for the fact that most Libertarians are (some form of) libertarians. There's also a spectrum of "how much should the state be allowed to do?", with answers running from "diplomacy and barely that" to "national defense, some large-scale infrastructure, and law enforcement" (and a ways beyond at both ends).
Objectivism is, as I understood it, a flavor of libertarianism.
Liberals are the boogeymen under the bed now that the COMMUNIST menace is mostly gone, or at least won't overrun Western Europe next week, with the extra bonus that the concept is nebulous enough that you can point at someone and cry "liberal" and find some support in their utterings unless they're somewhere rightward of Tom DeLay and Grover Nordquist. When people describe themselves as "liberal" on the other hand, they tend to mean don't want to intrude into peoples' bedrooms, see civil liberties as highly important (insert gnu control flamewar HERE, and let's leave it at that), and don't necessarily see government as eeeevil.
This is rambling and probably incoherent, and I blame lack of sleep. Sorry 'bout that.
I personally think Godwin's Law is as useful and applicable as it always has been, because all it is is an observation that the longer a discussion goes on, the higher the probability that someone will whip out a comparison to the Nazis or Hitler.
Avram: Tupac Shakur has now released more albums post-mortem than pre-. Also, a certain author with the initials L R H.
NelC: I enjoyed Run From The Future (as well as the rest of Warren's Dirty Pair books) - there's some really wild SF underneath the cheesecake. Plus, hey, cheesecake.
Will read over the coming month: a bunch of books on Chernobyl, due to a course at Uni.
On-the-bus braincandy: Thomas Harlan's Oath Of Empire Series (The Shadow Of Ararat, The Gate Of Fire, The Storm Of Heaven and The Dark Lord, just starting on The Storm Of Heaven).
On-and-off reading when I find a litte time: Martel and Savage, Strategic Nuclear War: What The Superpowers Target And Why, John Keegan, A History Of Warfare, Kaku and Axelrod, To Win A Nuclear War, and Brian Fagan's The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization.
No real surprise, but it seems to be pointing to an impressively diverse array of sites...
James:
There's also this:
"Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash."
Democratic registrations, I might add.
Not in this thread, but the recent comments list sure makes it look like there's another surge incoming...
In completely different news, Ron Reagan is unhappy with George W. Bush.
Yes. No idea, but leaning towards bagel. Neither, being a filthy state-church atheist. Alas, no idea, as my musical tastes runs elsewhere. Dante. Mouse. Sherman. Stirred.
Jonathan: Are you thinking of the Project for the New American Century and their report Rebuilding America's Defenses (warning, link #2 is a 850 kb PDF file)? There's more on them at Exposing the Project For The New American Century.
And, of course, there's a Windows "native" port of Emacs, too. (And I use cygwin, too, but not Cygwin/X.)
Eloise: Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings has had the book for two weeks.
David: My response would be "yes, no, no" and "yes, no, no," respectively. Multiple entities, possessive (if that's the correct term for it -- be warned that it's been on the order of seven years since I studied any kind of language, except programming ones, and that only lasted a year (and I didn't learn much, or retain anything)).
Jim Bennet: verbminx may have been thinking of Spengler's Der Hexenhammer (lit. "Hammer Of The Witches") (and I dredged that from memory, googling to see if my recall was correct -- and it was, from having read a mention of it a decade or so ago... eep!)
Oh yeah, while we're (more or less) on the subject of looted WMD sites: Greenpeace seems to be doing some good with the looted barrels from Al-Tuwaitha (the nuclear facility -- the looted nuclear facility -- that you may remember. Or not).
I've seen mention of flash crowd-like phenomena (or is that phenomenons?) arising as people send text messages telling of something noteworthy happening. Not quite as swift as Niven's crowds, but hey. And here in Europe, at least the Northern and Northwestern parts, cellphones have an amazing market penetration. (It's when you see, not only first-graders, but winos and bag ladies with cellphones, and when they give you $50 and a brand-spanking-new 'phone to sign up for a nine-month subscription that you realize quite how ubiquitous they are.)
Doug: Did you call it "Lenin Peace Price" when Henry Kissinger won it? Or Menachem Begin?
Doug: Did you call it "Lenin Peace Price" when Henry Kissing won it? Or Menachem Begin?
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