Thursday, February 17, 2005 |
Pickoff Moves
Now That's Comedy
John Manuel, in his Giants prospect chat:Heh. The Baseball America Prospect Handbook is at the printers, and should be on the bookstores' shelves in early March. I can't wait.
Q: Grant from McCovey Chronicles asks:
Can you say something bad about the Dodgers system to play to your audience?A: John Manuel: It's the second-best farm system in the Southland; the Angels have better hitters. But that's about it.
OT: The Trouble With Elections
Thanks to Big Action (newly added to the LA Blogs blogroll, an invaluable and fun resource) for passing on this OC Weekly link about Steve Rocco. Rocco, who won an election to the Orange school board, has proved correct the Mark Twain homily that "In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards." Having been duly sworn in, the previously unknown Rocco immediately started spouting off about the conspiracy to keep him down, &c, and so he has a traveling circus wherever he goes, and a permanent spot in the Weekly's County page.So with Iraq; having won the elections handily, the Shiites take the reins, and proceed to install their own Ayatollah, not unlike their neighbors across the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Americans are sent to die to crush one Axis of Evil member so that it can become just like the one next door. Hmm. If we're going to take over other countries, the least we can do is to leave behind a temporarily friendly government, but the Bush administration is so grossly incompetent that it can't even be bothered to get that right.
Tech Rant: Watch Your Step, Bill
I've been meaning to past together a few things about Microsoft here lately; the pickings have improved of late, especially since I've completely ditched my Microsoft desktop and gone all Linux. Early last summer, my PC developed a virus and could not be started, nor could any of the data on it be salvaged. As a result, I swore off Microsoft products and went with an all-Linux computer.The difference has been a breath of fresh air.
Firefox runs fast, is reliable, doesn't get viruses, has popup blocking, and is extensible in nifty ways. For one, the Adblock extension, which allows me to avoid looking at any ads if I so choose, including Flash ads. For another, the BugMeNot extension, which lets me use the BugMeNot database of anonymously generated logins; it keeps me from having to fill out form after form for various online newspaper ads.
The OpenOffice Calc that ships with Fedora Cora 3 is fast and compatible with Microsoft's Excel. Likewise, OpenOffice Writer understands Word documents. My work PC is stable, doesn't get viruses, and I get more work done.
Microsoft should be scared. Firefox now comprises a little under 5% of total browser usage, but I suspect that number is woefully underreported; earlier, Instapundit reported numbers of about 20%, and I wouldn't be surprised to see 30% by the end of the year if not sooner. I'm not sure they're learning anything, though, as security continues to be a problem for Redmond. That they have decided to view even this threat as a kind of limited business opportunity exposes just how shallow their thinking is. Indeed, they're still at it with the Windows is more secure than Linux trope, something that got whupped but good on Slashdot. Microsoft says that Linux has more patches than Windows, and this therefore proves penguin-powered PCs are less secure. Nonsense:
- Microsoft bundles patches into service packs. This is good in a sense if you're maintaining a bunch of PCs -- it means fewer patches to manage -- but it also means active exploits stay active longer.
- More patches is misleading because fewer of them are critical patches, a fact that a search through the CERT vulnerability database will quickly ascertain (use keywords "linux and critical" and "windows and critical").
The anti-security measures taken included using easy-to-guess passwords.
Watch your step, Bill. There's a penguin stalking you. Never mind the funny smell -- probably just means you need a shower.
Labels: tech
: 2/17/2005 11:16:00 AM1) Ayatollah al-Sistani has never played nicely with Ayatollah Khamenei – they practice two distinct forms of Shia Islam. Your connection with Iran is tenuous at best. In fact, Sistani is the Ayatollah of choice for Iranian reformers.
2) There are four predominately Shia nations on earth (not including Iraq) – Iran, Indonesia, Bahrain, and Azerbaijan. Of those, only one is a theocracy (Iran) and one is a fairly vibrant Democracy (Indonesia). The other two have been credited with making great strides in political freedom over the past few years.
I fail to see how the military coups that take place on a nearly daily basis in Africa and South America relate to Iraqi politics.
It's also at best an open question if the "voting Iraqi public actively panted for a theocracy." My understanding is that the Shia do not represent a monolithic bloc, and that Iran's theocracy represented in many ways a departure from previous Shia practice, which is supposed to be represented by Sistani and the clerics of Najaf. There is also the issue of Sadr, who everyone recognizes as more of the fiery Iranian type, and who you certainly don't hear much about after he was absorbed into the larger Shia coalition.
Sure, all the comments in western media by the UIA that they don't want a theocracy, that only a few clerics actually stood for elections on their list could be just bunk for western consumption, but you certainly haven't given a very good argument of why that is the case.
Furthermore, shouldn't the Iraqis themselves have some say in how they wish to structure the relationship between Mosque and State? And if they don't use the same type of separation associated with liberal democratic practice in the West, is that such a terrible thing? I don't think anyone posting here wants a repeat of Iran, or of Afghanistan under the Taliban, but their might be some middle ground between French lacite and theocracy, no? A middle ground that the Iraqis might be better able to determine than us? Turkey right now is run by a party with Islamist roots, and I don't see it trying to acquire nukes and sponsoring terrorism right and left. Christian Democratic parties exist to this day in the very secular world of western Europe. Is that such a horrible thing?
And where the Kurds fit in your analysis is an absolute mystery.
I think your blog is a great forum for baseball comments, partly because it's generally well argued, but if you're going to get into politics, you might want to spend more time on making your case than you did here.
We'll just have to wait and see.
: 2/17/2005 03:01:00 PMIraq: misgovernment is the exception to the rule; expecting armed occupation to end well is to roll the dice and hope they come up twelve. It's not impossible, just highly unlikely. The precedent I invoke is all of the former European colonies in Africa and South America; hardly any of them have come out right (Liberia? Rhodesia -- oops, Zimbabwe? Ghana? Còte d'Ivoire?). Just because al-Sistani is no friend of the Iranians, given a couple years, he's also likely to be no friend of the U.S., either.
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