the art of writing is discovering what you believe
Quite a bit, but my ‘hood still doesn’t rate a very good score. How’s yours?
Just how walkable is your neighborhood?:
The Walk Score people freely admit that their algorithm is imperfect: they don’t account for safety, public transit, or “pedestrian-friendly design.” It’s an interesting idea, anyway.
I’m closing in on 100,000 failed attempts here.
I think we have established that it only works for a vanishingly small number of attempts, meaning that most of it is just a waste of time, bandwidth, and energy.
Sad that we have such a rich environment for communicating ideas of value and so much of it is expended on peddling drugs and pr0n.
I am Shocked, Shocked to Find that the Saudis are Unhelpful!:
Who could have guessed when we launched a war designed to revolutionize the Middle East that the most conservative and reactionary regime in the area wouldn’t be overtly helpful? It’s almost as if reactionaries don’t care for revolution, although I understand how that basic insight could be lost upon a crew that started out as Trotskyites, became reactionaries, and have of late tried to restyle themselves as revolutionary liberals.
“The Road (Oprah’s Book Club)” (Cormac McCarthy)
I’m not recommending it or suggesting you avoid it. But it is the bleakest thing I have ever read. I wish it wasn’t night. I need some daylight to clear it away.
I decided to run this page through the new YSlow tool that Yahoo! is sharing with us. Ack, 63? I can do better, surely.
Wow, what a great idea.
I left this comment at win-the-war.com: the proprietor opines that —
There should have been a call to duty immediately after 9/11 for all Americans – not just to join the military (after all, we don’t want 40 million citizens to leave their jobs and join the military), but also to make certain simple sacrifices to further the effort, such as wearing a sweater instead of turning up the heat in the winter, driving less and carpooling, etc.
But Americans haven’t felt involved in the effort, and this detachment has increased the unpopularity of the war.
Furthermore, our soldiers are serving multiple tours in Iraq when plenty of men would sign up to relieve them if encouraged.
If you look back at the sacrifices the folks at home made during WWII — a war that was over in less time that has elapsed win 9/11/2001 and today — I agree that people could contribute to the war more vigorously.
But this isn’t a war like the war for Europe or the Pacific. It’s not even a war that needed to happen. There was no fleet that could and did cross an ocean to attack the US. There is no air force or even a standing army.
And I think you can see the lack of enthusiasm on the part of enlistment age men and women as illustrating the war’s lack of foundation. If people really thought this was the War for Western Civilization, they would sign up. But few people outside of some thinktanks and political magazines believe that, and they’re not encouraging sacrifices or any kind of community effort.
You may see the comments from OYE as cheap ad hominem attacks, but imagine the sensation if crowds of young men from College Republican groups or conventions made a show of enlisting en masse. But all we hear is updated versions of Dick Cheney’s “other priorities” excuse.
It comes to one of two things (if there are others, let me know): either enlistment-age Americans don’t believe in the war — in which case, we should bring the troops home sooner that quicker — or they’re afraid of or otherwise opposed to fighting.
Which is it?
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