High of 70: The weather is fine!

Nobody’s uninsured, cuz you can always go to the ER.

What a fucking putz.

Lovely story about two elderly Chinese women sentenced to a year of labor for attempting to protest at the Olympics.

I know that their culture is different than ours, and this sort of mean-spirited official bullying is not new, but if the Olympics is supposed to reflect the best qualities of humanity, this sort of behavior has to be forbidden. The US should boycott the games until the IOC draws up an official code of conduct for host countries.

This Russian invasion of Georgia makes me very nervous. The situation is very complicated, with bad actors on all sides. My current understanding is that the Bush administration implied that the Georgians could count on our support if Russia responded to Georgia’s attempt to retake the South Ossetia region. Georgia’s incursion into Ossetia, combined with Russia’s paranoia about its neighbor’s move westward, triggered the Russian smackdown. If Georgia really thought the U.S. was going to send troops to defend her, well then that reveals a bit of naiveté on the part of Georgia. I mean, our army is pretty well occupied at the moment. And why would we want to be in a shooting war with Russia? Come on.

The worrying part is that the issue is more complex than can easily be explained on CNN, and our politicians speak less to reality, and more to perception. So when Obama and McCain both endorse Georgian membership in NATO they gloss over the fact that Georgia’s bid for entry into NATO helped precipitate the current crisis. They clearly understand that that’s the case, but by not explaining it they perpetuate the current “Big Bad Russia” meme.

We can’t afford to get into a fight with Russia, militarily or politically. But there’s nothing much to do otherwise, and Americans aren’t much for patience I’m afraid.

Why do I say that John McCain is a fucking cunt? This is why is say that John McCain is a fucking cunt.

I guess enouraging their base to parrot them is the best we can hope for from these twits. Way to raise the level of discourse.

Informative article here from Chuq Von Rospach on MobileMe problems (via Daring Fireball, of course). Personally, I’m less annoyed with the outages of the MobileMe service, than with the anemic feature set.

Oh, my, these are funny. Merlin Mann points the way to riches!

Too brief but tantalizing article about a Dutch town testing “air purifying” bricks as a paving material. Sounds like they are intended to fight smog and acid rain, not CO2, but even that’s great if it works. Via Slashdot.

Now that The Wire is over, The Venture Bros. is the best show on TV. Go watch it.

John Gruber pointed this out on the twitter. The shorts are bad enough, but the analysis is INSANE!

Who’s surprised by today’s announcement that China will black reporters’ access to sites that it considers illegal? Nobody? That’s what I thought.

I wonder how many hookers it took for the IOC to acquiesce.

The media should ignore these stupid fucking games.

On the off chance that anyone reads my blog, and works in the web industry, go take this.

This looks real nice. I got me some dual monitors!

Independent streak. Sure.

Oh, yeah, I mean who wouldn’t want a Ford running Windows?

I don’t doubt that automobiles will become more “wired”, but these two companies have suffered from a lack of vision for so long that it’s hard to believe they will come up with anything interesting.