We have had as many U.S. casualties in Iraq after President Bush declared the end of major combat as we had during the major combat.

One quarter of the fatalities have happened since President Bush suggested that they "bring them on."

Go to your CD rack (mp3 directory, whatever) right now and play something you you bought more than five (ten?) years ago.

• Rubber Soul (Beatles), is an underrated album.
• Workbook, (Bob Mould). Wow.
• August and Everything After, (Counting Crows). Eh. Not so much.

Interesting read on complementary currencies (like frequent flier miles, time-dollars, etc.):

I am afraid that if the United States had to live by the rules that are imposed on, say, Brazil, the United States of America would become a developing country in one generation. [...]

But when people say, "Well, there are fiscal crises in other countries because the governments are less stable," my question is, "How long would any government last in a country if you had to repeatedly cut back on education programs, social programs, building roads and all other programs?" How could that make a stable democratic government possible? [...]

Practically all Balinese participate in a dual currency system. The first is the conventional national currency; the second is a time currency where the unit of account is a block of time of approximately three hours. [...] For each [big community] project, they always make two complementary budgets: one in the national currency, and one in time. That second currency is created by the people themselves. They don't have to compete in the outside world to obtain that second currency, and it fosters cooperation between the members of the community.[...]

Here's why it works: poor communities don't have a lot of national currency, but they tend to have a lot of time. In rich communities, the opposite tends to be the case—people have more national currency, but less time.

Webcam is back.

I'm going to stop reading the news now and go back into my dark little programming den before the blood vessels in my brain explode.

Co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, George Akerlof:

Past administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting.

Al Gore summarizes the gigantic missteps/lies of the Bush administration.

Would someone please explain to me why a president who conspired to lie and mislead the American public-- putting thousands of troops in danger and over a hundred killed-- isn't sitting in front of Congress right now explaining his actions?

The previous president lied when directly asked about an indiscretion which put no one in danger or killed anyone, and Congress tried to impeach him.

What the hell is going on?!

Perhaps privitizing everything you can get your hands on isn't a good thing: civilian military contractors can't be ordered into a combat zone.

Even better, they don't even know how much it is costing since there are so many contracts. Maybe some things are done better in-house?

Slightly old news: Espiscopal Church has confirmed an election of a gay bishop.

Albany (NY) Diocese did not.

If you're interested in beta alpha-ing the game (which I can't name due to search engines), then drop me an email. I suggest that you have a fast machine: 1GHz+ P4, GeForce 3+, 256MB of RAM. You should also have a broadband conenction and a willingness to play and comment.

There's a link to the Foam Totem Schwag Shoppe at the top of the page now, if'n you're looking for it.