John Weidner (and others) think that we should boycott Yahoo over their scummy deal with China to restrict access to some sites from over there.

Fine with me, but how do I do it? What is it that Yahoo provides, that I should quit using? I never even go to the site.

Antoine Clarke thinks that to compare Chris Patten to Marshal Petain is a disgraceful slur–on Petain.

I continue to be amazed at the consequences of Moore’s Law.

I went into Fry’s yesterday looking for a video card, and I saw on display a five-port auto-sensing switch for $29.95. Not just a dumb hub, but a dual-speed, full-duplex, non-bandwidth-sharing, packet-collision-avoiding switch.

But wait! There’s more. That was the regular price. That day, and that day only, it could actually be purchased for $19.95.

Still not a good enough deal?

What if I told you that packaged with it was a 10/100 auto-sensing PCI network interface card, all at the low, low price of $19.95?

I couldn’t resist, even though I already have a couple spare NICs. I figure you can never have enough NICs. I took it home, and plugged it into the ethernet outlet in the spare bedroom. It started to pass pings with merry abandon, and now I have another node on the network.

I fully expect, the next time I open a box of jumbo Cracker Jacks, to find a bubble-packed Cisco 2600 router…

With so many talented and insightful writers out there (most of whom I’d never even heard of less than a year ago, let alone read), it sometimes seems that there’s little new to say, or ability to say it better than others already have.

But I think that there’s value in saying things that aren’t new, and even in repeating things you’ve said before yourself, because apparently, the message continues to not get through in many cases, as evidenced by editiorial insanity continuing to spew from the WaPo and paper formerly known as the Paper of Record.

And if we continue to hammer on the same valid themes, as more people become aware of this medium, new readers will read them, or those who have read them before will view them in a new light, perhaps refracted through the prism of the latest atrocity in Israel, or some particularly egregious and appalling evidence that Islam (at least right now) is not the peaceful religion that many of its proponents claim.

For example, James Lileks says little new in today’s bleat on the latter subject, but (as is usually the case) he says it in a new and compelling way. If everyone read him, it would rightly be the last word on the subject, but there are many who remain still unaware of his writing–even his existence, so what he says will probably have to be said again (though through the magic of permanent hyperlinks, the next person who has to say it will have this gem to reference).

So, I’ll be less reticent in the future about repetition and recycling of old material, and less intimidated by the many greater talents here in the blogosphere, because I’ve come to think that it can still make a difference.

Just in case you thought the UN had any moral authority or credibility, check this out.

Daddy Warblogs (aka Steve Chapman, and no fan of the US war efforts in general) has a bracing little rant about the double standards at the UN vis a vis the Middle East (though of course that’s by no means the only venue in which such hypocrisy appears). And the Professor weighs in as well.

Definitely read Steve’s err…disquisition, but from Glenn:

I notice a certain selective indignation among the U.S. “peace” crowd, too. And if you point out that Arab nations, almost without exception, act horribly, you get the usual bogus accusations of racism in response.

The most disgusting thing about these leftist tactics is their “pot, kettle, black” quality. The real racism is not in pointing out deficiencies in the Arab nations, and expecting them to improve, but rather, in giving them a pass, and holding them to lower standards than the state (which really is a state, where people, even Arabs, you know, like vote and stuff, as opposed to all the other Arab thugocracies) of Israel.

Speaking of using unjustified teaching methods, Jacob Sullum takes on some more folks who do just that.

A study in the latest issue of the journal Health Education Research concludes that many schools use ?heavily marketed curricula that have not been evaluated, have been evaluated inadequately or have been shown to be ineffective in reducing substance abuse.? The lead researcher, Denise Hallfors of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, does not mince words in her evaluation of DARE. ?There?s no scientific rationale whatsoever for maintaining DARE in the schools,? she says.

Basically, every time the curriculum is shown to be ineffective, or even counterproductive, the DARE folks come out with a new one, claiming “This time for sure!”

Why do we continue to allow our children to be used as guinea pigs by well-meaning nincompoops?

Gee, I’m sure glad that, amidst hunting down the next folks with ambitions to do more unscheduled urban renewal, the FBI has the time and resources to go after those horrible brothels that have been blighting my life.

The devastation that the “whole word” movement has wreaked on generations of schoolchildren who never learned how to read properly is having other deleterious effects. Joanne Jacobs has an article that describes how lack of phonics knowledge makes it difficult to learn foreign languages as well.

The people who have foisted this nonsense on our children shouldn’t just be fired–they should be punished. What they’ve done to blight the future of millions of children is criminal, with the only plausible excuse being their mental incapacity. It makes you want to bring back the stocks, at least.

How did we allow the mindless educational establishment to get so much control over what’s arguably one of the most important tasks of society–teaching our children, and impose such non-scientific and idiotic policies on the entire system, based only on academic theories, from academic departments that are the repository for rejects from serious fields? As the report of two decades ago put it, something like, “If a foreign nation imposed on us the educational system that we’ve imposed upon ourselves, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.”

It reminds me of the old joke about the Soviet Union.

A boy asks his teacher in class, “Teacher, was Marx truly the greatest social scientist in history?”

And the teacher replies, yes, of course he was.

“Well, then, if he was such a great scientist, why didn’t he try this crap on rats first?”

Steven den Beste has been on a roll lately, as exemplified by this exposition on battle tactics and strategies and the value of wargaming.

While it’s all good, this part jumped out at me:

…One of the interesting things about a lot of these principles is that when they happen some people not truly versed in the art of war will assume that they indicate failure. When a plan breaks down and the officers start to improvise, when things don’t go the way they are expected to, when someone cannot say ahead of a battle exactly how it will come out, then they portray this as a failure of the command structure, and perhaps as an argument against fighting the war at all. For instance, one argument voiced by many about the prospect of our attacking Iraq is that by so doing we may throw the whole region into chaos.

Well, yes. We might. But while that’s a factor to be taken into account, it isn’t necessarily a fatal objection. When I’m playing Go against a player who is substantially inferior to me, who plays with a handicap, sometimes when I see a situation I don’t like what I’ll do is to make a series of moves which make the situation fantastically complicated even if I can’t see where it will end up. What I’m relying on is the fact that as it develops I’ll be able to use my superior understanding of the game and ability to analyze it to see my way through the situation before my less experienced opponent, and will have the situation in hand before he even realizes what I’m doing.

To some extent this happens in every war. No-one can ever predict at the beginning of the war the timetable for victory, or even where all the battles will take place. The Allies didn’t decide on an attack on Sicily (nor where on Sicily) in WWII until after the combat in North Africa was largely finished. It wasn’t the only possible choice, by any means. For instance, an attack on Sardinia might have provided well-placed airfields for heavy bombers which would have given them the ability to reach all of Italy and France and even southern Germany.

War is inherently chaotic, but you can use that against your enemy if you’re better at it than he is…

This is one aspect of a couple of things that folks in the blogosphere (and other places) have been saying over the past few months.

One is that Foggy Bottom’s (and Whitehall’s) elevation of stability in the Middle East to the highest value is preventing us from doing what needs to be done (and was the cause of our failure to remove Saddam the last time, and our treachery toward the Kurds and others who wanted to, and probably could have, overthrown him then). A chaotic situation with prospects for improvement is superior to a disastrous status quo, which is what we have now.

The other thing that it reminds me of is one of Rumsfeld’s laws. When a problem seems intractable, enlarge it. That’s probably the only way out of the mess in Israel.