What are we doing over there?

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I know that, despite Bush’s insistence that the war ended weeks ago, we’re still in a combat situation in Iraq (at least, that’s how I’m interpreting our one-soldier-killed-per-day average). I’m sure that in such a situation, not everything is going to be sunshine and roses. But even so — what the hell?

NEVER again did families in Baghdad imagine that they need fear the midnight knock at the door.

But in recent weeks there have been increasing reports of Iraqi men, women and even children being dragged from their homes at night by American patrols, or snatched off the streets and taken, hooded and manacled, to prison camps around the capital.

Children as young as 11 are claimed to be among those locked up for 24 hours a day in rooms with no light, or held in overcrowded tents in temperatures approaching 50C (122F).

[…]

Mr Akhjan, whose 58-year-old father was arrested three weeks ago for driving a truck with no doors or headlights, said: “People are so sickened by what is happening they talk of wanting Saddam to come back. How bad can the Americans be that in three months we want that monster back?”

Things are looking worse and worse over there, and we’re not helping the matter by behaving like this. If this keeps up, we’re just going to keep ticking the Iraqi people off, we’re going to continue ticking the rest of the world off, and the long-term repercussions are not going to be good.

(via Tresy)

Tablet PCs

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I just had someone ask me what I thought about TabletPCs. Honestly, I haven’t given a whole lot of thought to them. I have, though, been a fairly regular reader of Robert Scoble‘s for a while now, and he’s big into the TabletPC thing, so I just pointed them to his site. Too bad Radio doesn’t categorize, though — he’s mentioned TabletPCs so many times in so many different contexts, that it’s difficult to narrow down any single post about the various pros and cons of TabletPCs. The first two I came up with were both from last December. I’m sure that Robert himself could come up with better links, but those were a good start.

That's it, I'm moving

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I already have a tendency to find Asian women quite attractive. I’ve also long thought that clothing doesn’t have to be revealing to be sexy — leaving details up to the imagination can be a very good thing.

Then today, Jeremy posts about Yukata season in Japan…

This is probably the right place to mention that I think kimono and yukata are about the sexiest articles of clothing ever designed for women (with the possible exception of old blue jeans and a crisp white shirt). Unlike a lot of Western style clothing, they look great on people of all shapes and sizes and they provide the most tantalising glimpses of ankles, napes of necks (oooh!) and clavicles (big oooh!) as well as ample encouragement to the imagination (as if encouragement were needed). The pseudo-porn attractions of hot pants and bared midriffs are simply grotesque compared to the unostentatious (but hardly demure) eroticism of the kimono.

Damn straight. And when’s the next boat to Japan? ;)

Pings?

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Why is it that when using a desktop blogging client (I’ve noticed this behavior in three so far: Userspace, Kung-Log, and NetNewsWire), pings don’t seem to be sent when a post is published? The URLs to be pinged are saved with the post, but the actual ping doesn’t seem to take place. Is this a limitation of the XML-RPC implementation, or is it possibly a bug within TypePad (cringes, and looks around wildly for the gods of the NDA to strike me dead)?

Too much going on…

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Well, it looks like the US is finally starting to wake up to the fact that the Bush administration hasn’t exactly been entirely truthful with the American Public. About damn time.

Rather than post link after link after link, tempting though it may be, I’d advise checking out a few key sites and going through the past few posts. There’s some really good stuff out there right now.

Recommended reading:

Move, you momos

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To the group of yuppies walking down 8^th^ Ave., between Pike and Seneca, while I was walking up.

There’s eight of you, all grouped together in your power suits and nametags, on your way to or from whatever conference you’re at. Eight, stretched across the entire width of the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, there’s only one of me. And a fairly skinny me, at that. I don’t take up much space.

So why do none of you move enough to let me by? It doesn’t do any good for me to move to one side or the other, I’m still faced with a wall of corporate momos that I can’t get past. Would it kill you to leave a little space for people walking the other direction?

So that’s why I stopped dead in my tracks and watched you all. Not stalking, not trying to be threatening or obnoxious, as your puzzled looks when I stopped seem to imply. Merely waiting for you to get your little group out of my way so I could get home.

Gr.

News to nobody

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Something I just discovered, thanks to a comment at Etherfarm. If you’re running Windows XP, on-screen text legibility can be drastically improved by switching on ClearType.

To do so: Start Menu > Control Panel > Display > Appearance tab > Effects… button > Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts option > ClearType menu choice > Apply.

Observe:

2003/07/graphics/standard

Without ClearType

2003/07/graphics/cleartype

With ClearType

Of course, text under OS X looks like ClearType-enabled text under XP from the getgo, without having to drill down through dialogs and menu choices to find the option, if you even know that it’s there. But, admittedly, at least the option is there, and it does help.

Random is fun

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There’s something wonderfully surreal about listening to my iPod on the way to work, and going directly from Coolio’s “Ugly Bitches” to “American Wake (the Nova Scotia Set)” off of Bill Whelan’s ‘Riverdance’ soundtrack.

About that homework

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Here’s what I was thinking about yesterday with my Homework post. Marilyn Monroe’s “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” reminded me strongly of a Björk song, but I couldn’t think of which one. I’ve tracked it down — ~~have a listen, and compare and contrast~~. I’m quite curious as to whether Björk may have had this in mind when she recorded “It’s Oh So Quiet”.