"The most important thing is for us to find Osama Bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him!"—George W. Bush, Sept. 13, 2001
"I don't know where Bin Laden is. I have no idea, and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."—George W. Bush, March 13, 2002
|W|P|91737855|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"It is also worth noting that this week, while the headlines were clogged with war, President Bush signed an executive order making it easier for government agencies, including the White House, to keep documents classified and out of public view. The order does a number of things. It authorises a further three-year delay to the declassification of any government materials. It adds any documents sent by foreign governments to the US, no matter how routine, to the classified category, and it expands the powers of the CIA to prevent declassification of sensitive documents.
"However, of most concern ... is the power given, for the first time, to the vice president to veto the release of information by designating what should be classified. Given Mr Cheney's clear disregard for the public's right to know what is going on inside the White House, that is a worrying development. ... It is difficult to escape the feeling ... that the world's largest power is being run by a private club."—David Teather, Guardian, March 28
"Ignorance is strength."—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts."—Edmund Burke
"Government can be a kind of gangsterism, and is, in Russia, and is likely to be here if we don't take care of ourselves pretty carefully."—Frank Lloyd Wright, interview on "Mike Wallace Asks," 1958
|W|P|91654669|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comBlimey! My Polish chess antagonist finally mated me after 44 moves. He kept the initiative for nearly the whole game:
I'm not sure I made any significant mistakes, I just didn't fight hard enough for the initiative. Funny, I was rated 47 points higher going in. But then I resolved not to use databases. Yeah, that's it.
|W|P|91615100|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Between work and home, I've been too busy this week to write very much, or even to keep track of what's going on in the world. I've been trying to keep vaguely abreast of what's happening in Iraq, but it all seems so nonsensical that it's hard to stay focused. How can this be happening? Why are we even there? Bush says we're defending freedom. Apparently someone doesn't want us to be free. Who? Saddam? Saddam doesn't want us to be free, so he's creating weapons of mass destruction, so he can give them to "Al Qaeda-type" terrorists, who will use them to terrorize us? What does any of that have to do with freedom? Seriously. How does that curtail our freedom? Our constitution is the same. Our civil rights are the same. Our laws haven't changed. Do we have a human right to be free from anxiety? Where is that written? Does that justify invading another country and ousting its leader? A leader whom we are not accusing of terrorism himself, merely of possibly aiding the kind of terrorists who might act in the way we fear? How could any intelligent person accept this?
|W|P|91575060|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThere's an interesting report on the cricket world cup in last Friday's Guardian:
LOOK I'M SORRY THIS ISN'T EXACTLY THE SORT OF QUALITY EDITORIAL COPY YOU EXPECT FROM THE GUARDIAN BUT LOOK AT THE FACTS I'M ADRIFT IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF THE WORST CITIES IN THE WORLD SITTING IN FRONT OF THE SAME COMPUTER SCREEN I FACE DAY AFTER INTERMINABLE DAY HELL I COULD BE WAKING UP IN SAY THE MALDIVES OR SYDNEY OR COPENHAGEN OR A CROFTER'S COTTAGE IN SKYE AND GOING FOR A WALK IN THE CRISP MORNING AIR?|W|P|91510718|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Wow, I just drew a 1732 comp to raise my FICS rating to 1690. That's my highest in two years.
|W|P|91442061|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comI think I'm in pretty good shape. I haven't missed a workout, weights or running, this year. Running at 6 mph raises my heart rate near 170, but it drops down into the 130s within 60 seconds. Now I just have to keep it up and avoid injuries.
|W|P|91378965|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comForeign Policy is printing a debate between Richard Perle, a Pentagon national security advisor, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the European Parliament�s Green Party, on Iraq. Two representative quotes:
Perle: Nobody has to say, �Thank you.� It is quite sufficient for us to know that people in Iraq will no longer live in abject fear.
Cohn-Bendit: Recently, your government has been behaving like the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. You want to change the whole world! Like them, you claim that history will show that truth is on your side. You want the world to follow the American dream, and you believe that you know what is best for Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Africa, Liberia, Yemen, and all other countries. Like every revolutionary, you have good ideas, but your problem lies in the means you want to use to realize them. Suddenly you want to bring democracy to the world, starting with Iraq. What happened to this administration, which began with promises and plans for a humble foreign policy and nonintervention?
Perle also says, "We will hand over power quickly�not in years, maybe not even in months�to give Iraqis a chance to shape their own destiny."
|W|P|91308472|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comI spent most of today working on the budget with Sharon and then hauling, cutting, hacking, raking, and rolling crap out of our increasingly Vietnamesque backyard. I really wish we'd taken a "before" picture, so we could demonstrate that this really is an improvement.
Meanwhile, Sharon's been doing a huge amount of research into what we can plant back there, and today I think she found a real winner, a conifer like arborvitae that will make a nice evergreen wall against the advancing forest. Now we just have to hope that the nursery carries it.
|W|P|91255272|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFinished the damn taxes today:
- Federal: $895 refund. Woo!
- Indiana: $34 refund. Woo!
- North Carolina: $394 refund. Woo!
Moral: Be poor.
|W|P|91193542|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAtlantic Unbound on "What Makes W. Tick": "Practically, Bush's faith means that he does not tolerate, or even recognize, ambiguity: there is an all-knowing God who decrees certain behaviors, and leaders must obey."
|W|P|91131160|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comI've been complaining about this winter, but really that's mostly because we had to move during an ice storm. In reality, moving to North Carolina was a smart move—everywhere else we've lived has gotten hammered this winter. Dulles Airport in northern Virginia broke its old snowfall record by 10 inches, with 54.6 inches so far. Northern New Jersey (Sussex County) got 76 inches. Bloomington got 47 inches. Here we've just had one and a half ice storms. What little snow we've had has melted very quickly. And already things are starting to bud. The winter felt very long, but it was a lot less treacherous than it could have been.
|W|P|90986985|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn resigning from his government yesterday, Robin Cook, the ex-Foreign Secretary who led British troops into Kosovo, received a standing ovation in the House of Commons.
He allowed that his forces in Kosovo did not have a U.N. mandate, but noted that they did have the support of NATO and the European Union. The invasion of Iraq has the support of none of those organizations. And he made a very good point about U.S. hypocrisy:
"I dare to say that Iraq has not had months, but 12 years in which to complete disarmament. And our patience is exhausted. Yet it is over 30 years since Resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. We don't express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply.
"I welcome the strong personal commitment the prime minister has given to Middle East peace. But Britain's positive role in the Middle East does not redress the strong sense of injustice throughout the Muslim world as what they see as one rule for the allies of the U.S. and another rule for the rest."
|W|P|90919694|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA passing note—representatives from Ireland and the opposing factions there are visiting the U.S. today to get a few stray moments of attention from our policymakers. The occasion? Saint Patrick's Day. Isn't that demeaning? They brought a bowl of shamrocks so they could get some photo opportunities. I'm surprised they don't have to dress up like leprechauns. Every day I'm more ashamed of our country.
|W|P|90856956|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comDaniel Dennett has written a stupendously lucid article about the irresponsible frivolity of postmodernism, and how the disciplines that matter won't touch it for ethical reasons. He manages to say all this without sounding arrogant. And it's true.
|W|P|90803316|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."—Hermann Goering, Hitler's designated successor, before being sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials
|W|P|90786728|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking."—A.A. Milne, "War with Honour"
|W|P|90682685|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comMan, it's been more than a week since I've posted something worthwhile. Just very busy at work, and busy at home. And now it sounds like this weekend will be packed as well, unless it rains—our next-door neighbor and I are going to start clearing out the brush and trees from behind our houses.
Anyway, tonight I found time for a 20-minute chess game, which turned into a real nail-biter. My opponent disconnected at the end, but I have the game in for adjudication. If they give it to me, this should push me over 1700 on FICS:
|W|P|90679803|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe Times Online reports that even George Bush Sr. is against the war. Speaking at Tufts, he said his son would jeopardize a wider peace in the Middle East if he attacked Iraq without U.N. support.
|W|P|90517770|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comEurekalert reports that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be only the fourth "preventative" war out of the approximate 85 interstate wars since 1816. (The other three were Germany-Russia 1914, Israel-Egypt 1956, and Japan-U.S. 1941.)
D. Scott Bennett, associate professor of political science at Penn State, says the U.S. has virtually no history of preventative wars:
"The Bush administration does not face a number of restraints that have prevented wars in other situations," Bennett says. "Since Saddam Hussein lacks any real supporters, the United States will not be seriously jeopardizing any alliances or friendly relationships by attacking him. Third, the Bush administration need not fear incurring the wrath of some other superpower which might consider itself a protector of Iraqi interests, such as the former Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. Fourth, the United States has no shared political or ideological views with Iraq or anyone in its leadership that would make us hold back; and an Iraqi war entails no damage to trade or other major economic interests. Even if Iraq destroys its own oil reserves, the United States has access to others.
"By contrast, wars with the two other 'Axis of Evil' nations would be more complicated and costly," says Bennett. "In Iran, the government contains a certain percentage of moderates, and so there is hope that Iran will exercise restraint, resulting in improved relations without war. With North Korea, an armed conflict would be more protracted and expensive. Moreover, the United States would have to deal with critical allies, especially South Korea, who are opposed and whose support is essential for the Bush administration, if only logistically. Furthermore, the United States risks antagonizing China with a war on its southern border."
Bennett and his colleagues have "analyzed the reasons for 85 wars and 2,000 lower-level crises, noting that there has not been a single predominant cause for war over the past two hundred years. Instead, a variety of elements must come together in particular combinations to provoke wars, with some of the more powerful factors including democracy, bipolarity, geography and trade relationships among states."
|W|P|90373355|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comResults of a recent British report on happiness and public policy, according to The Guardian:
- "Despite the massive rise in wealth, self-reported happiness has not increased in the U.S. or Japan in the past 50 years, nor in Britain since records began here in the 1970s. Paradoxically, richer people are happier than poorer people, but as all incomes rise, differences between income groups remain."
- Seven factors promote happiness: "a comfortable income; mental health; satisfying and secure work; a secure and loving private life; a safe community; freedom, and moral values."
- "Mental illness causes 50% of all measured disability in our society, yet only 12% of NHS funds are spent on it, and only 5% of the medical research budget. Although serious depression can be helped by a combination of drugs and cognitive therapy, only 25% of cases are treated."
- "Married people are the happiest—a finding that holds across cultures, age and income—and it would cost 72,000 pounds a year to match that happiness."
They conclude that "we probably live in the happiest society that has ever existed, but it would be good if we could do better."
|W|P|90188114|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."—William Blake
|W|P|90185737|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThis was a FICS G/30 played against a weaker player. I was very tired, but I think I played fairly well. I took a pawn on the queenside and then traded down. I don't think I handled the endgame perfectly, but it was good enough to win. Fritz shows no significant errors.
|W|P|90147298|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comMan-i-chae-ism, also Man�i�chae�an�ism. n.
- The syncretic, dualistic religious philosophy taught by the Persian prophet Manes, combining elements of Zoroastrian, Christian, and Gnostic thought and opposed by the imperial Roman government, Neo-Platonist philosophers, and orthodox Christians.
- A dualistic philosophy dividing the world between good and evil principles or regarding matter as intrinsically evil and mind as intrinsically good.
Speaking of which, if everyone who opposes us is evil or irrelevant, why do we keep seeking their approval?
|W|P|90138008|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The finalists have been announced in a logo contest for the Department of Homeland Security. Of the six eagles shown, only one is still holding an olive branch. This version has crossed swords, for God's sake.
|W|P|90055970|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comYe gods, exercising is going to kill me. I thought I was in fairly good shape. I'm 6 feet tall and weigh 155. I've been lifting weights and biking for 12 years. I've always been reasonably disciplined about working out, and this year I haven't missed one session. I lift weights twice a week, and run twice a week on our new treadmill. To keep it interesting I thought I'd drive it with workouts from IFIT.com, which is supposed to tailor the difficulty based on fitness. I'm a Level 2, which is supposed to be moderate, but it had me warm up, run at 5 mph for 5 minutes, run at 6 mph for 9 minutes, run at 5.5 mph for 5 minutes, and cool down. All this running is uphill, at about a 3-degree incline. It was brutal. My heart rate should be at 135-140 for maximum aerobic benefit. It went up to 170 and stayed there. I'm going to drop the IFIT stuff until I'm in better shape—I can just have the treadmill customize a workout based on feedback from the heart monitor. I wonder what a Level 3 workout feels like ...
|W|P|89995659|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comMan, if we did the taxes right then we're getting an $895 refund from the feds this year. I double-checked all the numbers and it seems to be right. I think it's because I was sure we'd owe a lot—I'd been unemployed for half the year, and not paying taxes on freelance income or jobless benefits, so I paid a lot of estimated taxes and then made two IRA contributions at the end of the year. I still have to do the state taxes—part-year returns for Indiana and North Carolina. But even if we owe them money, we'll break even at least.
|W|P|89995549|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Yesterday would have been the 470th birthday of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, the world's first essayist and still the best I've ever read. Born in 1533, he was allowed to hear and speak only Latin until he was 6. For a time he was mayor of Bordeaux, but at 38 (my age next week) he retired to a round tower room lined with a thousand books and determined to study the one thing he was an authority on—himself. He called his writings essays because they were attempts, not always successful, to understand himself and his world.
His writings show amazing, unflinching honesty, humility and insight. Howard Gardner would have called him an intrapersonal genius. Huge gulfs of language, wealth, time and education separate us, but I recognize myself in him all the time. When he says, "My neighbor's horse looks better than mine because it's his," he prefigures my own Law of Guitars and Stereos by 400 years. Other observations:
"If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be on more equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field."
"The most certain sign of wisdom is a constant cheerfulness."
"Virtue will have naught to do with ease. ... It demands a rough and thorny path."
"Man cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen."
"Satiety comes of too frequent repetition; and he who will not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true pleasure of drinking."
"We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him."
"I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself."
|W|P|89958020|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com