Pangloss

BTW, more evidence came to light of Iran's involvement on Friday, when Hezbollah launched a sophisticated and powerful anti-ship missile at an Israeli warship. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FCBD9700-D204-44AA-9719-6B2AB11C26C4.htm

I think it's a huge mistake to underestimate the intelligence of the current population in Lebanon. One of the reasons that so many foreigners are there right now is because that country WAS undergoing a near-renaissance. People were likening Beirut to it's old reputation of "the Paris of the Middle East" again. It wasn't the rubble-filled-streets city of the 1980s at all. Vast economic investment, a major tourism industry, a big housing boom -- the whole nine yards. People were MOVING there, and they were doing so because they WANTED to live there. That's what makes this situation so tragic -- they had come incredibly far, and now it's all gone. That's not to say that there wasn't an underlying peasantry that will now happily produce thousands of new recruits for Hezbollah -- no question about that. But as I understand it MOST of the disappointment amongst the movers and shakers in the country right now is aimed squarely at the government and Hezbollah -- NOT Israel. They knew they were living in a house of cards and they knew exactly why. They knew the international community was trying to pressure their government to ditch the terrorists, but they just couldn't seem to get the job done. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't live there and I don't know anyone who does, but that's the general feeling I'm getting from reading news reports.

One thing at a time.

I've heard this speculation as well. I think that would be a mistake on Iran's part -- shades of 1979. But I don't know enough about the socio-political atmosphere inside of Iran to know how that would "play in Peoriabad".

I've no idea on that one. What I was aiming at is Iran. Iran is an obvious puppet master in this conflict. It funds Hezbollah, and likely approved the attack/kidnapping that started this conflict. They're happy as clams right now, because regardless of the outcome, they win. It distracts attention from the situation with their nuclear program, it destabilizes the region at a time when destabilization favors Iran, and it makes the US look bad, all at the same time. They can't lose.

I don't think the average citizen in Lebanon either approves or desires Hezbollah and/or its ways. They're just caught in the middle. Edit: I misunderstood you there, but it's not quite the same since the Israeli targets were not civilians. But I think criticism of Israel's actions here is valid up to a point. One could draw an analogy to the situation between the US and Saddam Hussein in 2003. It's not quite the same, since Israel is responding to an attack, but they are escalating beyond the level that international opinion will support. At any rate, regardless of the justification, this is where I think that Israel can (and should) stop. They have a right to defend themselves, but the effort they've embarked upon is not going to achieve the desired result -- it cannot demolish Hezbollah (or for that matter Hamas), it is unlikely to get them their soldiers back, and it will make the situation worse. (Obviously they have to respond to the rocket attacks, but the attacks on leadership and infrastructure targets have accomplished their goals and should be, at least temporarily, discontinued, as an overture towards peace.) They've done a great deal of damage; in a sense, they've made their point. Very loudly. Now's the time to try the olive branch again.

I can certainly understand the feeling of being caught in the middle that millions of innocent civilians are experiencing. There's no question that those people are getting a raw deal. I feel for them, I really do. You realize, don't you, that you've just excused the deliberate killing of innocent civilians, the very people you were talking about in your first paragraph? Why is it okay that innocent Jews die, but not ok that innocent Palestinians die? Why is one ok but not the other? That's not a problem of slight differences in definitions. No, that's two wrongs making a right. Nothing here but more two-wrongs thinking. I've actually POSTED on the Liberty incident on these very boards before. I've charged Israel with covering up that incident, with human rights violations, and with just general "going too far" many times. That's because I don't believe that two wrongs make a right. You bet, I'll speak out against Israel when it does things it shouldn't. Absolutely. But none of that has anything to do with what's happening right now. Two wrongs don't make a right. Not now. Not then. Not ever. ---------------- The civilians of Lebanon have known full well, for YEARS now, that they needed to do something about Hamas and Hezbollah. They've been unable to do so. Some of them PREFER not to. This in spite of overwhelming international condemnation of their actions. Now they're paying a price for that inaction/inability. It sucks, no question about it. It didn't have to become violent. I hope it becomes less violent and a diplomatic solution is found. But it's absolutely reasonable for the international community to demand the end of Hamas and Hezbollah. Absolutely. No question about it. It's pretty much as simple as that. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that rarely in the history of the modern Middle East conflict have things been so clear.

It's rather glaringly obvious that deliberately killing civilians is counter to their purpose. The country I was alluding to earlier, the puppet master behind all this, is Iran.

I think the media is missing the true significance of what's taking place here. The question of whether the conflict will spread to a larger scale is interesting, I agree, but what's more interesting to me is the fact that this event appears to have been specifically designed to escalate. Hezbollah leaders don't take a leak without consulting their foreign purse-string holders, who surely approved, and perhaps even ordered, the attack/kidnapping that started this affair. And these alien puppet masters, who are not even Arabs have absolutely everything to gain, and virtually nothing to lose from what's happening. Tom Clancy could not have scripted this extraordinary example of Machiavellian intrigue better. Who am I talking about?

The land did not originally belong to the Arabs. We have no idea who it originally belonged to. The Jews have as valid a case for ownership as the Arabs. The idea that we can set an arbitrary starting point, and place that one ahead of another claim, is pretty ludicrous in a land that has probably been utilized by various migrating ethnic groups for hundreds of thousands of years.

I didn't say anything about inflation. The increase in spending was due to low interest rates producing huge numbers of new mortgages, and consumer spending rising as we came out of the recession. Inflation had nothing to do with it, because it wasn't a factor yet (and as you say, arguably still isn't).

What do I think about it as a political issue, or from a scientific perspective? In the case of the former, I agree with your assessment. Ironically, I don't think it "plays in Peoria" -- they're preaching to a choir that's not really interested in learning any new hymns. It's just too complicated for Joe Sixpack, which is part of why Dems still have inroads on economic issues in spite of a booming (or at least surging) economy. Joe makes a little more money these days, but he spends 70% more than he was 5 years ago, and only makes 8% more (or something like that), because he's just too darn stupid to stop using his credit cards to buy that new X-Box 360 and a dozen games for it, etc etc etc. As far as the economics are concerned, I think you and Severian have covered the issue adequately and eloquently, and I would not presume to add anything major to that discussion. I suppose would point out that even Alan Greenspan agrees that the tax cuts helped the economy (past tense). They had an impact on pulling us out of the recession we were in. But that's ancient history now. We're in a major war (actually three separate conflicts: Terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan), the number of conflicts is actually rising rather than falling, and we've got to do something about the personal debt situation and the growing need for jobs. These issues are simply more important than cutting taxes. But I digress. Getting back to the subject, I know they're saying that cutting taxes increases revenue, but an hypothetical curve doesn't prove this -- I would have to see actual numbers from the administration. Numbers that INCLUDE other sources of revenue, such as the tax money they're getting from the increased consumption of oil (I think the rate is fixed, but consumption is way up this year). What other sources of revenue might be up as well? I don't know. The Laffer curve doesn't tell me. I do agree with the general principle represented by the curve. The idea that if you increase the tax rate beyond a certain point, more people will try to find ways to avoid paying. Seems reasonable enough, in a theoretical sense. I just don't think it's always reflected in the real world. It's no more accurate than, say, Asimov's "future history".

This is actually one of two major news stories that came out this week regarding the Valerie Plame outing incident. The other one was when Robert Novak, the person who reportedly received the initial leak/tip/whatever, broke his silence on the issue. I've never quite figured out what to make of this. I'm as disturbed as the next non-ideologue about the practice of outing agents for political gain, but from the very beginning we've been hearing about how it was the "worst-kept secret in Washington" and how he went around introducing her at parties as his "CIA wife". It's within the realm of possibility that somebody blurted something out in frustration and that's all there was to it. On the other hand, it's also within the realm of possibility that part of her cover was to be only "semi-covered", in a sense. An obvious kind of reverse-psychology that perhaps actually makes sense in the world of espionage. Also, even if she's the worst-kept secret in Washington, if you know she's in the CIA, then you don't talk about it. Period. It's not your place as a public official to discuss it. I don't care what her husband did -- two wrongs don't make a right. But I'm also generally annoyed by political hacks -- on BOTH sides -- who turn mountains into molehills for ideological reasons. They're playing games with my country, and I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. These things will have to be determined by historians, but as far as my personal reaction is concerned, this has both worsened my opinion of the administration's intelligence-handling and politics-playing, and worsened my opinion of the political intrigues that leftist partisans are willing to play in their frothing determination to convince everyone that they were right about Bush all along. Because, you know, he's just a womanizer from Arkansas, so we should have known this was coming. Er, wups! I mean a Republican and an oil man, so therefore we should have known this was coming. It sucks to be in the tiny minority of this country that actually pays attention to something besides the "D" and "R".

I think we're going to have to call that one the Bascule-Laugher Curve.

It was quite a big story at the time, and it had some interesting and unexpected ramifications. I seem to recall at one point Wal-Mart (and perhaps Home Depot and some others) announcing that all local law enforcement were given carte blache to use whatever resources they could find in their half-destroyed stores, essentially exonerating them from any further charges of looting, as well as protecting their stores from further damage in the process by ensuring police presence in the area. I believe one department even based itself out of a local Wal-Mart during the aftermath crisis. I'm curious as to why would this be significant to "a bunch of local activists"? Was it considered ammunition of some sort, and if so, for what purpose?

Yes, and as such, above reproach!

Guess it depends on what sort of office they're running for.

SQL has a built-in programming language called Transact SQL, which is similar to Oracle's Procedure Language (I teach both; as Sayo points out, they're very similar). It lets you create what they call "Stored Procedures" which contain all your progamming logic, and then you can call them from Query Analyzer, inputting the relevent parameters. You can also write a front-end interface in any programming language when calls those stored procedures remotely, passing in the relevent parameters. Alternatively you can construct your SQL queries in any external programming language and treat SQL Server as a mere data repository, constructing all of your data elements in arrays and so forth, entirely within your program. The first approach is seen as having an additional "tier" (e.g. "two-tiered programming" or "three-tiered programming"). That's an advantage because it means that your external program doesn't have to be modified every time your database changes (so long as your database people keep their stored procedures updated). You might want to check out this site, which shows the relevent connection strings used to connect to various database products: http://www.connectionstrings.com In addition to the PhP suggestions above, you may also want to check out Visual Web Developer 2005, which is a free download from Microsoft. It's very simple to use and might get you to your goal more quickly, espeically if you're not actually trying to learn programming, you just need to complete the task your boss assigned. Even so it still has a learning curve. Microsoft posted something new the other day called "Blinq". It's some sort of automatic Web app creator. All you do is point it at your database (giving the appropriate credentials and DB location) and it constructs an ASP.NET application that interacts with it. Unfortunately I have not yet looked at it or know anything at all beyond what I just wrote, so caveat emptor. http://www.asp.net/sandbox/app_blinq.aspx?tabid=62

Ain't it the truth. But then my two favorite teams are the Braves and whomever is playing the Yankees, so I'm not very objective on the matter. (grin)

Changing the WEP Key in Vista: 1. Click Start button 2. Click Network from the right column in the start menu 3. Click Network Center from the horizontal menu bar 4. Click Reorder wireless networks 5. Double click the wireless network you wish to edit 6. Click Security tab 7. Change the encryption type and network security key 8. Click OK

What the heck was Zidane thinking? Wow. I don't care what the other guy said or didn't say, that was just a loser thing to do. Did anyone catch the U2 "One" video montage after the game? Way cool.

Random thought: Doesn't Steinbrenner spend more money than that on the Yankees' salaries?

Enjoy this rather pathetic Guardian op/ed in which the writer puts forth the completely unsubstantiated allegation that Bush/Rove/FBI stole the Mexican election for the conservative candidate. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/greg_palast/2006/07/stealing_mexico_an_election_di.html Because, you know, the conservative party has been SO friendly to the US. And an evil Republican like Bush could NEVER even POSSIBLY enjoy the support of a liberal/left party. It's just inconceivable that he WOULDN'T tamper with their election! I'm amazed he doesn't suggest that Bush arranged for Britain to lose to Portugal in the World Cup.

Perhaps they fall more along the lines of an open transmission. The pedophile-chasers certainly don't seem to have any problems in that area.

Well I guess that's a better phrase than "global warming deniers" (18,200 hits on that phrase at Google -- gosh it's fun to be politically incorrect). (sigh) Anyway, yah, he had some interesting observations. Thanks for passing that along.