rare bird

Link : Daily Show. As Jon says, " Have pride in a government that allows for such a peaceful non-transfer of power ." (Seriously, does it make any sense to have an inauguration for a second term?) The Freedom 27 - Liberty 15 final score that Hamlet refers to was part of the show yesterday, where Jon commented: " It was a noble effort by Liberty, which as you know has been playing hurt since the PATRIOT Act ." If the result of Bush's rhetoric is a foreign policy that promotes liberty throughout the world, this is a vital mission. Given the success of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (BTW, Yushchenko's inauguration is this Sunday! Link .) we need to ramp up support of democratic / libertarian movements everywhere. I wish Bush had spoken out more openly about Ukraine than he did. I hope that he will speak out more in the future, when it comes to movements in other countries. My hope is that we will create the greatest diplomatic push in history to carry out...

George W. Bush was sworn into office yesterday, making him only the 16th president to ever be elected to a second term. In this 23 minute inauguration speech he used the word freedom 27 times and liberty 15 times (thanks Daily Show). Already the Bush dynasty has lasted longer than the Kennedy dynasty, and there is already talk of a Jeb Bush in '08 campaign (he is the taller and smarter brother), with rumors of a George P. Bush to follow (he is the son of Jeb who George Sr. once referred to as "one of the brown ones"). I for one welcome our Bush overlords.

I will be watching. They've been re-airing the mini-series this week and it looks quite good. Producer Ron Moore: "Our goal is nothing less than the reinvention of the science-fiction television series." I think they will continue where Star Trek: TNG left off, and go even further.

Got this from Hamlet. As he says, "What a collection of great quotes." Luther was a neverending source of great 'table talk.' I hope I get the chance to meet him someday.

My Galileo Themometer tells me it's 68 degrees. Inside the office.

It took me some frustrating digging, but I found an RSS feed for Microsoft security bulletins. This way you can keep up to speed when Windows Update is really necessary without getting a bunch of emails.

"Now that Apple Computer has shown it plans to go after new, low-cost markets for its Macintosh computers and iPod music players, investors will turn their attention today to the company's top and bottom lines when Apple delivers its 2005 first-quarter results."

Scobleizer is reporting that Apple has released the Mac Mini, an honest-to-God PC with no peripherals. He says "looks like a great place to run Windows" and laments that the price of Wintel machines at Wal-Mart is still lower. While I would argue that's completely missing the point, if he buys a Mac Mini I won't complain. What is more important is that Apple is finally willing to release themselves from their insistence on PC-peripheral linkage-bondage and is acknowledging the reality of the market. This means they've got a fighting chance against the other PC makers to win over consumers who are not going to stop using Windows and can't ditch their Wintel PC, not to mention their monitor and keyboard (like my family). Using a KVM switch, my wife and I could use the same monitor and keyboard but different PC's. I could have a Mac without finding a new room to use it in. It also shows Apple is a serious technology company, not just a fashion company w...

Rare Bird is proud to have Hamlet D'Arcy as our Foreign Affairs editor. He's just returned from a trip to Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and - simply put - has traveled more than anyone I know. You can also check out his blog at mi vida poco .

Holy Day After Tomorrow ! Seriously, though, the NOAA defines a Wind Chill Watch as when temperatures plunge below -35 deg. F. We're not going to reach that, so it could be worse. That makes me feel a whole lot better.

This is a reference to the last time this happened.

John Kerry has refused to join the challenge - the result will not be changed - but Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has agreed to sign a challenge from House Democrats so that a spotlight can be shined on voting problems that arose in Ohio. Discuss.

J.R.R. Tolkien did not like it when people tried to find analogies in LOTR or any of his other writings. He wanted people to take his books at face value, not try to read meanings "into" them from the outside. Regardless, many people have found analogies in LOTR, most commonly images of world war. Despite Tolkiens' protestations, this makes sense because he did fight in World War I. After seeing Peter Jacksons' films, particularly the "Council of Elrond" scene in FOTR, a new analogy arose in my mind - that of the Ring as the terrible power of nuclear weapons in our postmodern world. The scene is like a mythological IAEA - all the races of Middle-Earth gather to debate the fate of the Ring, and to decide who will be the Ringbearer. There is a lot of argument and conflict over this issue; jealousy and suspicion abounds; precious unity is sacrificed to the thought of using the Ring as a weapon to defeat Middle-Earth's enemies. In the meantime, the Ring ag...

This template is perfect. The star represents the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the other hues represent my Blue America sympathies. It's also cleaner in terms of organization and feel.

"Eleven dimensions, parallel universes, and a world made of strings. It's not science fiction. It's string theory." Probably the most significant thing about string theory is that it hammers the last nail in the coffin of methodological naturalism. It essentially says that matter is energy, that vibrating strings are the smallest bits of existence and are almost infinitely malleable, and make up the entire universe. And this is all within nature, though it may be outside of common experience. "Nature" no longer refers to what we sense directly. String theory predicts 11 dimensions, 7 of which exist in the subatomic realm, outside our common experience. It says that our universe may not be the only one. More than that, our universe may be inside a super-dimensional space wherein reside many universes. Where is the boundary between this kind of thinking and belief in a "spiritual world" outside our common experience? If a person could have...

"Ukraine's Supreme Court has rejected all four complaints against the conduct of the presidential election lodged by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. " TAK!

"Reinforcing his image as a Western-leaning politician who hopes to expand Ukraine's ties to Europe, Yushchenko also said he planned to create a new government agency, the Ministry of European Integration... Moreover, in a sign of the degree to which Yushchenko appears prepared to wrest power from the remnants of Kuchma's government, Yushchenko said he would replace all of the 10 regional governors in eastern Ukraine who had threatened last month to form an autonomous region. Under the Ukrainian Constitution, the president appoints all regional leaders... Yushchenko also suggested that he was willing to prosecute Kuchma, who has been accused of election-rigging, corruption and abuse of state power... And Yushchenko restated his intention to investigate privatization deals he says were rigged by Kuchma's administration to sell state assets at absurdly low prices, particularly that of a metallurgical plant earlier this year to Viktor Pinchuk, the president...