Monday, July 09, 2007

Diggsters Dig Ron Paul

The Diggsters just love Ron Paul. Read the comments about this Dugg story, which discusses a USA Today poll that shows Ron Paul not even registering.

The IT world is a strange one, politically and philosophically. I'm still trying to figure it out.

Bush To Withdraw Troops? @#$@#$ Politics

Yet another reason to hate politics: if Bush changes his new strategy before it's had time to play out, as defined by the generals he put in charge of implementing said strategy, merely because some Republicans are no longer backing him... Well, that would take a bad situation and make it far, far worse.

And I realize the wild understatement inherent in that last sentence.
Digg Report: Today's #1 Digg, at 3687 Diggs, is a story about some Australian youths who outsmart a speed camera.

Zonkers! Although it sounds a bit like an urban legend to me, or at least something that's been done before. And someone tell me: why am I writing so much about this?

Cox and Forkum Get It Right Again - Global Warming

Cox and Forkum's typical on-target political cartoon, this one on global warming.

EMRs will Matter, Eventually

Having some minimal experience working with electronic medical record (EMR) systems, this study doesn't surprise me. It's a market in a very nascent state, and one dealing with tremendous complexity. I've been in the position to debunk some common misconceptions about EMR's, such as the notion that they're just scanned images of paper documents.

One they get things right, though, watch out. The EMR will one day have the same sort of impact on medicine that CAD/CAM software has had on design and manufacturing. More so, even.

New 7 Wonders

I was fond of the original 7 Wonders of the World. The fact that most of them no longer exist merely added to their mystique. The new seven simply don't have the same impression on me.

Google Does Evil? By Whose Definition?

I've always thought that a company adopting an ambiguous, unprincipled, undefined motto such as "Do No Evil" was in for trouble. Didn't Google's founders understand, at the very least, that people have different definitions of "evil"? To some, just being a large successful company is a mark of Satan, and Google passed that definition long ago.

Google is also comprised of individuals, and as this story shows those individuals have personal opinions that will also offend some people's moral standards. Specifically, there's the blog entry by a Google employee that recommended that healthcare companies advertise on Google as a means of countering the effects of Moore's hack job, "Sicko." Now, I, personally, find that both an intelligent and a highly moral post, but many considered it to go against Google's motto.

And therein lies the rub. Go to Google's Web site, and their company philosophy (and the motto) is spelled out more clearly. But they haven't failed to milk the more general "Do No Evil" urban legend, and it's starting to cost them.

140,000 Turkish Troups on Iraqi Border?

This can't be good. Turkey has put 140,000 soldiers on its border with Iraq, obviously in response to Kurdish motions for independence. I don't really know the history here, but the Kurds seem the most "civilized" of the various factions.

The minute the US leaves Iraq, all hell will break loose. And it's probably a hell that's been building up for decades, and likely needs to work itself out on its own.

I become less and less certain that we're doing any good in Iraq, even beyond my fundamental belief that we should have deposed Saddam Hussein, imposed a US-style Constitutional republic, and then enforced it, harshly if necessary, until the Iraqi people accepted it. At the same time, we should have made it perfectly clear to Iran and Syria (and, apparently, Turkey, ostensibly an ally) that interference would not be tolerated.

That's not what we've done, however, and we're paying the price. And I have no idea what the right answer is at this point.