No time to extensively comment on any one thing (see the diary for whinging about mail clients and messed-up workstations (and new baby pictures)), but I have been seeing some thought-provoking stuff and I figure I might as well point at it.

This morning’s CNN war update increased the “pucker factor” a bit, at least for me: what looks like the beginning of mission creep in Basra, and (former NATO supreme commander) Gen. Clark (ret’d) talking about “extensive logistics problems”. I haven’t done a tremendous amount of military history reading, but from what little bit I have done, I can say that you almost never see “logistics problems” mentioned anywhere close to “rapid and decisive victory” — at least now when both phrases are referring to the same side of the engagement.

John Perry Barlow (you might have heard of him…) on “CONTEMPLATING WAR IN THE LAND OF PEACE“.

Danny “NTK” O’Brien on low bandwidth info-interfaces to the war, and how they affect your perception of unfolding events.

Meanwhile, back in the land of the Free, some states are deciding that elections might just be too expensive to bother with. (Via the recently on-fire-and-burnin’-up Medley.)

Also in the “no time to do things right” column, the Justice department has let the FBI know that there’s no need to be too picky about what info goes into the main criminal database in the country. Rumors that Ashcroft said, “We’re going to store that info on everybody sooner rather than later anyway, so they might as well get a head start” could apparently not be confirmed at presstime.

I’ve still got significant backlog of “hey, should blog this” stuff in both the mail and news clients, but that’s going to have to wait for another day; it’s goto work time now.

In the shower this morning (just let it lie), I got to thinking about the “French military victories” thread over on Flutterby (direct link to the thread elided, to avoid pouring any more Google juice on that fire), and I realized something. All the things that Americans stereotypically hate about the French — their disdain for other cultures, their need to have things their own way — their essential Gallic arrogance — these are the French peoples’ most American qualities.

Make of that what you will.

There probably won’t be a great deal of war talk here; right now, I’m feeling quite a bit like I did post-9/11: like I just want to hole up and ignore the world and hope it goes away. (Not a terribly enlightened reaction, I’m the first to admit.) But something of this magnitude deserves some sort of acknowledgement, some sort of commentary, maybe especially from fence-sitters like me, who can’t quite make up their minds about the whole thing. So here’s something I sent to a mailing list I’m on, which comprises my current state of opinion vis a vis Gulf War:TNG:

I don’t disagree that Mr Hussein is a very, very bad man. I don’t disagree that Iraq, and the rest of the world, would be measureably better off if he was dead. I do question the timing of this action. I do question its relevance to the “war on terror”. I do question the high-handed bully-boy way we’ve gone about trying to achieve our stated, inarguably good, goal. I do question if the long-term costs to our economy and our standing in the global community outweigh the benefits of doing this good, noble thing in this way, at this time.

And I don’t think the ends ever justify the means.

This week’s Photo Friday assignment is ‘garbage’. Of course, since we’ve got a baby, and we’ve just moved, there’s no shortage of garbage around the old homestead. Here’s what about 15 minutes of walking around yielded:

First stop, the child’s new room. She’s normally a cloth diaper baby, but she’s been in disposables all this week because of the headaches posed by dealing with cloth diapers during the move-in processe. Disposables == big piles of trash, kids.

A totally different ‘green door’ than the one you may be used to thinking of…

Second stop, the garage, which is currently The Place The Boxes Go To Die. Many boxens died for this move! (And not a few wrapping papers. And, yes, we’re trying to give the boxes away to people planning on moving in the future; otherwise, the cardboard will get recycled. Mail me if you’re in metro DC and want some of the boxes.)

My submission is the second trash can shot, the open lid one.

So, for a while now, I’ve been repeating Dan Lyke’s contention that “XML is the subset of SGML that was understandable by Microsoft’s programmers”. Looks like I might have to stop doing that; Tim Bray (co-developer of XML) says “XML Is Too Hard For Programmers“.

Guess they should have picked a smaller subset.

this is apartment.genehack.org, signing off. See you on the house side.

Things are likely to be rather quiet here over the next week or so. (Unless y’all start a mass of chatterin’ in the comments, or something. Be my guest.) We’re gearing up for the end days of our move — the truck roll is on Thursday — and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have other assigned tasks aside from blogging. See you on the other side.

I was wondering why I kept getting posts to the discussion thread for the recent ‘get yer fake id here…’ post. Then I checked my referral log, and found out that I’m number five in a Google search for “how to get a fake id”, which is kind of interesting. And the discussion page doesn’t have the post on it, because I’ve never gotten around to reworking that template. I wonder how many more requests I’ll accumulate… 8^)=

I’m thinking I’ll be taking part in Photo Friday, at least when I remember to. (The site will be showing up in the dose during weekends, which should help.) This week’s challenge was “stapler”, and I happened to come across my stapler while unpacking some things at the new house yesterday. TheBaby was hanging out with me while I unpacked, and inspiration struck…

Here’s the shot I actually ended up submitting:

Lots more pictures of TheBaby (and a few of the house interior) over on today’s diary entry, BTW.

Why does the address change form for Maryland driver’s licenses present (at least the appearance of) the option to change the state part of your address?